


afraid of standing still

by sherlockelly



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Coming Out, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Falling In Love, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Recovery, Responsibility
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-01
Updated: 2013-05-01
Packaged: 2017-12-10 03:12:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 25,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/781113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockelly/pseuds/sherlockelly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dany Heatley continues to drift violently away from the idea of the man he had wanted to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	afraid of standing still

**January 21st, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dan jumps on Dany’s back as they file back into the locker room after the first period. “Fuck yeah!” It’s not exactly the most articulate thing that’s ever been yelled at him, but Dany could care less. He knows exactly what Dan means anyhow, the adrenaline coursing through his body and the twitch of a smile on his lips. 

He shrugs off the other man and spins to punch him on the arm, face to face, both of them dripping with sweat. 

“Second on the year, Snydes!” Dany ruffles Dan’s hair like an oversized child and the wet, sloppy waves stick up all over. 

“An’ two on the night fer you, eh?” They share matching smiles, front left teeth both missing. 

“Don’t you two make a fuckin’ attractive pair,” Marc Savard shakes his head with a crooked grin as he walks by, clapping them both on the back. 

“Fuck off, Savvy,” Dan laughs and throws a glove at him before turning back to Dany. “Ready to finish ‘em?” 

Dany beams. He could do this forever.

 

**February 3rd, 2004  
Boston, MA**

He sits at the bar in his game day suit. It’s freezing outside, but he can’t feel anything. The anonymity of the road was certainly something he’d loved before, but it is what he cherishes now. With his hair slicked back from the shower and his suit covering any bruises he might be sporting, he feels like he could be anyone in the world. The last person he’s looking to be tonight is himself. 

He’d scored his first goal since he got back right at the start of the game. A tiny, dark presence in the back of his mind had convinced him that’s all he’d needed to do to start putting everything in the past. The moment the red light flicked on, his eyes shut and he waited for the wave of relief, maybe an easing of the ache in his chest. Slava Kozlov slapped his helmet and he felt it reverberating down his spine, but then nothing. Scoring hadn’t felt like anything at all. No release, no respite; just the ringing in his ears. 

Every bit of his celebration after that felt like an act. It hadn’t mattered anyway as the Bruins still put away the game winner with less than two minutes left. 

He sips at his drink, the warmth pooling through his limbs and warming him from the inside out. He’s good at blending in when he needs to, but the place isn’t too busy on a Tuesday night and a quick scan of the room turns up no one worth his time. 

The upside, he thinks, if there can ever be an upside about his situation, is that no one on the team bats an eye when he disappears anymore. It had been a challenge before, slipping off quietly to a bar more to his taste, without someone asking to tag along or inquiring as to where he was going. 

Now, they let him go wordlessly. Kozlov will smile sadly at him and tell him to call if he needs something, ‘ _anything_ ’; Ilya will pretend he’s letting Dany have his space. He’s sure half of them are convinced that he won’t come back one night, will just disappear into the darkness and never be found. 

He’s thought about that. He’d be lying if he said that he hadn’t. 

Maybe his teammates all know he’s too chicken shit to ever do it; maybe if he ever were about to disappear they _would_ ask him where he was heading off to. 

The door to the bar opens and the fluorescents outside cast a glow across the floor. A group of younger guys come briskly in, dressed for the weather outside. They already know each other, they’re already paired up; nothing about them interests him either.

The chill sends shivers down Dany’s spine as the air seeps easily though the suit fabric. He can be whoever he wants tonight, he can do anything. Anyone. 

God, he really had expected that red light to change something. Now all he wants to be tonight is alone.

 

**September 3rd, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

He’s lying down on his sofa trying to take an afternoon nap when his cell starts vibrating from the coffee table. 

Dany flips his phone open and before he can even say hello the familiar voice is barking at him. “Hope yer not too scared, Heater. Yer biggest offensive threat has arrived!” 

“Who is this?” Dany feigns unfamiliarity but he recognizes Dan’s voice without even needing to check the caller-id. 

“Fuck you, that’s who!” Dany laughs as Dan continues. “Guess who just made the fuckin’ club full time!”

“No shit! Congrats, Snydes! You callin’ from the rink?”

“Nah, the Ellis actually. Got myself a five-star suite!” He laughs. 

“Downtown?”

“Yeah, my new residence, I guess. Just got back from my meeting with Hartley and Waddell about the good news.”

“You’re gonna stay there all year?”

“Well,” Dan trails off in uncertainty. “So that’s sort of one of the reasons I was calling. First of all, ta let you know to watch yer back,” He laughs. “And second, I wanted to ask ya if you didn’t mind me stayin’ with you until I get a place of my own.” The humor is gone from his voice and Dany can hear the nervousness; his friend’s humility makes him smile as it’s not something that he hears often. “I mean, the hotel is nice or whatever, and they make my bed for me, so that’s an automatic plus right there but--.”

“But you’ll miss out on seeing my beautiful face every morning?” 

Dan explodes with laughter. “Yeah, somethin’ like that, man.” 

Dany has never been a loner, not even when he was little, and he’d be lying if he said that he didn’t feel isolated in his house, especially after road trips, with the built-in companionship of a roommate. He’d bought the place with the extra rooms so that he could house friends and family when they came to visit, but during the season that was rare. Maybe it would be nice to have a place that didn’t echo. 

“Dan, I got that empty guest room upstairs. It’s fuckin’ yers as long as you want. The whole season even.” The sigh of relief from the other end of the phone makes Dany laugh out loud.

“Jesus, I was fuckin’ hoping you’d say that. The last thing I wanted to deal with right now is Atlanta real estate sharks.”

“Well then, I guess my loss is your gain.”

“Damn right it is. I’ll be bringing all my earthly possessions by in a few days, then so make room. Dad and Jake are already driving my shit down in the van.” 

“Fuckin’ cocky, aren’t ya? How’d you know I’d say yes to you?” 

“I know you, Heats. Couldn’t pay you to spend a night alone Atlanta.” Dan has always been good at reading between the lines. 

“I’m never gonna get rid of your ass, am I?” Dany smiles wide. 

“Ah, don’t worry about that! I’ll do your laundry and cook you dinner.”

“So yer basically gonna be my house husband then?” 

Shit. The second he says it, he realizes what’s looming over him. 

“Any way you want it, baby!” Dan laughs but Dany can hardly hear it over the sound of his heartbeat. His personal life is all well and hidden when he’s by himself, no one to answer for or to, but he just offered to share his most private space with someone else. Someone who, so far as he knows, doesn’t have a clue about any of Dany’s extracurriculars. 

He takes a deep breath in and before he can back out, he speaks.

“Hey, um. Before we set all this in stone, maybe we ought to meet up and talk or something. You know, sort out the details, or…” He trails off stupidly. “Can I come by the hotel in a few minutes?” 

He hears the hesitation on the other end of the phone, his sudden change in mood not lost on Dan. He hurries to undo some of the damage.

“I’m not backing out or anything; the room is definitely yours if you want it. But—”

“But I might not want it?”

“Something like that, I guess.” 

He can hear Dan breathing on the other end of the phone and he bites his lip. “Yeah, you can come by. Know where it is?”

“Yeah,” Dany croaks. 

“Okay, then. I’ll meet you in the lobby in, like, ten?” 

“Sounds good.” Dany hangs up without saying goodbye.

 

**February 13th, 2004  
Vancouver, BC**

His second goal after returning comes at a better time, he thinks. For starters, the Thrashers win the game, and that alone lifts his spirits. He’s given up on the voice inside of himself that promises more than can be delivered. 

And then there’s that part where Friday nights have always been better nights to go out, Dany hums to himself as he scans the crowded bar. He’ll have better luck being someone else tonight; he can already feel the victory coursing through his blood. 

He hasn’t been out like this since the All-Star break, those days off a perfect excuse to fuck himself into nonexistence, and he’s itching to find someone to take home. The day-before-Valentine’s-Day singles crowd is out in full force and he allows himself a moment to appreciate the showing. 

The sudden hand on his shoulder makes him jump and turn, but the ice-blue eyes smiling back at him do more to take his breath away than the scare. 

“Sorry,” the kid smiles at him in a way that tells Dany he isn’t sorry at all. The suspiciously sly look on his own face is enough to, he hopes, convey that he knows this. The kid orders his drink, a vodka tonic, before taking the empty seat next to Dany’s. He takes the opportunity to drink the guy in. He’s taller than Dany standing, but seated he can tell that he’s got at least four inches on the kid. He’s certainly younger than Dany is, he can tell that right away, though the haggard look of Dany’s face has nothing to do with age. 

He’s got a mop of brown hair with flashes of blond in the bar light; soft waves and curls falling sloppy around his ears. He looks familiar, and Dany finds himself wondering if maybe they’d played together in bantam. 

“I’m Michael,” the kid offers his hand and Dany takes it, shaking slowly, fingers lingering as he lets go. He’s interested, no use in pretending otherwise.

“Aaron,” he winks at the kid. He’s someone else tonight; he’s powerful. Most importantly, he’s whole. “What’re ya, sixteen?” Dany cocks an eyebrow as the kid laughs. 

“Close,” Michael’s pale eyes sparkle in a way that makes Dany’s hair stand up and his suit pants tighten. “Twenty-two.” 

“Ya don’ look it,” Dany responds skeptically. 

“Could say the same fer you. Look like yer playing dress up in that suit, _Aaron_.” He stresses the name, his full lips curling like he knows it doesn’t really belong; knows that Dany is just borrowing the rights for the night. Maybe he finds Dany just as familiar. The thought is exciting in a way that his conquests on the break hadn’t been.

He takes a sip of his drink and licks the remnants off his lips as he sets the glass down again in the wet ring of condensation. His fingers brush away a few trailing drops down the side of the glass. He looks up to speak. 

“So, who’re ya pretending to be, all dressed up in yer Dad’s suit,” Michael’s eyes flash with mischief but Dany nearly chokes on nothing. 

“Excuse me?” It comes out in a squeak, not nearly as suave as he’d hoped to come off. 

“Yer, what, only twenty yourself? Y’expect me to believe this?” Michael thumbs the shoulder of Dany’s suit but his eyebrows raise when Dany suspects he finds the fabric more expensive than what he was expecting. 

Dany wants to smirk but the way this kid (not really a kid, barely younger than he is) seems to be reading him, he feels himself losing all the control he thought he had over this situation. 

“I’m twenty-three,” Dany stammers, a little taken aback that he could ever be mistaken for younger than thirty, if the bags under his eyes and scars on his chin aren’t enough of an indication. Perhaps he’s not pretending hard enough. His eyes drop down to the bar counter as though he’s suddenly finding his drink interesting. What else can this kid read on him?

“So, what are you doing in here alone all dressed to the nines, Aaron?” Michael regards him with a curious look that doesn’t seem as predatory as it originally had, perhaps Dany’s fading bravado taking some of the competition out of their banter. The silence between the question and his answer grows and he starts to feel painfully transparent.

“Dany.” He doesn’t know what makes him say it, but once it’s out, he can’t take it back. “It’s Dany, actually.”

“Dany,” Michael smiles. “I like that.” He doesn’t seem at all put off by the fact Dany had been lying and it makes him relax a bit. His shoulder still twitches where Michael had brushed his fingers. 

Finally, the bartender brings over the kid’s drink with an apologetic shrug and wink. It’s busy tonight, but Dany forgot to notice as the crowd swelled in around them. 

He wants to say something witty and sly, the way he usually does. He downs the rest of his drink and gestures for another. Suddenly he’s way too thirsty. 

“So?” Michael leans into him like they share a deep secret. Maybe they do; Dany’s not sure how much of a secret his real self is these days, but tonight, it feels private. He feels naked for having shared it. “Why are you here in your finest suit?” 

He finally looks up from his drink and takes in Michael’s smile; wide and happy. As comfortable as he feels, this doesn’t seem like a good idea anymore. Something about it just isn’t as easy as it usually is. 

“This is just pretend. I’m hiding,” Dany’s mouth seems to be moving before his brain can stop it. 

“Not from me I hope.”

No, Dany thinks to himself, not from you. He takes in Michael’s broad shoulders and crooked grin, the way the left corner of his mouth turns up more than the right, the way he wets his lips before taking another sip. 

Dany swears he’s seen him before. 

“I’m not sure yet,” he quirks his brow and Michael laughs. 

“I don’t think I’m that scary, do you?” His cheeks are already pink from the alcohol and his eyes are nearly crystal blue. Dany just wants to kiss him now, doesn’t want to mess with the pretense, but nothing about this night has gone the way he’s expected so far. 

“You’re not scary at all,” he sounds embarrassingly breathless but it’s met only with a genuine smile. 

“So, what do you, Dany? You can’t be local, I would have seen you around here, I’m sure.” 

“Work in computers, technology, that kind of thing.” It’s the practiced answer and it comes out sounding rehearsed, but this is the one thing he’s not in any way willing to tell the truth about it. He can tell by the quirk in Michael’s smile that he doesn’t quite believe the reply, but for once he doesn’t push and Dany is grateful. “What about you?” Changing the subject is always the safest route when he senses skepticism, but it’s not hard to feign interest in the boy before him. 

Michael’s blush grows deeper and some of his confidence seems to disappear under Dany’s scrutinizing gaze. He drags a hand through his wavy hair and a few strands stick up awkwardly afterwards. It makes Dany smile. 

“I go to UBC. Don’t really _do_ much. Study,” he says it with a devilish grin and Dany feels is own face flush. “Lots of studying,” his hand is on Dany’s knee and the two of them must look like royal idiots, he’s sure, blushing like school girls at the bar, flirting shamelessly. 

He places his hand on top of Michael’s and now suddenly it does feel too easy. This part is distinctively too easy.

“What do you study?” Dany takes a sip of his drink, licking the remnants from his lips afterwards. He watches Michael notice and his stomach tightens up pleasantly. 

“Well, I’m finishing up my bachelors in European history, but after that, I’ll probably look into teaching.” 

“History, eh? No shit.” 

“ _European_ history,” Michael counters, a sparkle in his eye. Dany tips his head to the side and smiles an effortless smile. He hasn’t felt so free in a long time and he’ll be damned if he’s about to let this chance go to waste. 

“I was a history major, too,” Dany bites the inside of his cheek to contain his grin. “You live nearby?” It’s a definite invitation and if his words don’t give that away, he hopes that his expression does. 

“Yeah,” the nails press into his thigh and Dany inhales sharply. “Wanna come by for a tour?” 

He throws back the rest of his drink and Michael follows suit. 

“Absolutely.”

 

**October 19th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dany grunts as he lumbers through the hall on his crutches, his knee throbbing with each bit of pressure. 

He tries to keep up with Jake but it takes him a moment to navigate his own staircase. 

“So all of this then?” Jake calls from the bedroom where he’s been busy sorting his brother’s belongings into plastic storage tubs, most of it barely unpacked. Dany grits his teeth as he takes a wrong step. 

“I—ugh, shit.” He has to stop and rest for a moment when he reaches the top, leaning against the hallway wall. “Yeah, uh, all of it, pretty sure. A lot of it is, um, he still had a lot of stuff in boxes. There are some boxes of mine in the closet, too but they should be pretty far back; I’ve been storing some stuff back there.”

Dany starts again back down the hall, gritting his teeth as the pain shoots up and down his leg with each slow step. 

“So… some of this is, uh, yours then?” Jake sounds far away and unsure. 

“I think there’s maybe one or two back there yeah,” Dany finally makes it to the bedroom door and leans against the frame; he’s embarrassed to be panting. “Should be marked though, I think.”

“S’it the uh, um, the one labeled ‘D’?” He looks up in time to see Jake folding the cardboard tabs down quickly and his blood runs cold when he sees what he’s got in front of him. He knows exactly what’s in that box. 

“Yeah. Ugh, fuck,” he maneuvers as fast as he can across the room, the blush growing hot in his cheeks. “That’s um, that’s mine.” 

Dany tries to hold it shut with his crutch, balancing his weight on one leg as he does but he’s still shaking too much to steady himself. 

“Hey, it’s okay. I’m not like, I don’t want to be going through your stuff or anything.” 

Dany has to put both crutches back on the floor or he’s sure to lose his balance. The box opens back up with the weight of its contents and scattered among his old college textbooks are a few porn magazines, the smooth topless men giving the contents away instantly. He knew he should have tossed those the second he’d made the show, but it had just become a chore that he’d never gotten around to, never had a reason to make it a priority. 

The room is thick with tension and Dany is the first to break it, saying everything he thinks he needs to say. 

“Dan wasn’t—I mean, he’s not. Dan wasn’t, like, gay or anything. N-not, well, if so he never said, but. It’s not like we were. I mean, well, he knew that I was, but he never, we never. It’s not like we ever did anything or like—.” 

“I get it. It’s okay, Dany, relax.” 

“I just don’t want you to think that, you know. We weren’t a couple or anything, that’s not why he was living here.”

“Dany, I know. I believe you, it’s all right. It’s all right.”

It’s not until Jake’s arms are around him that Dany realizes how hard he’s shaking. 

“He was just a friend. W-we were just good friends,” he whispers it into Jake’s shoulder and he’s so glad that there’s someone there to help hold him up. 

He’s not sure he could stand on his own right now.

 

**March 30th, 2004  
Vancouver, BC**

He doesn’t know how they’ve found any time at all to meet up in the last month and a half, but he’d been able to convince Michael to fly out and see him on the road quite a few times. Dany had bought some of the tickets himself, and he’d gone out to Vancouver on one of the few off-days he had. 

It was getting harder to lie to Michael about what he really did, though he had a strong suspicion that Michael hadn’t ever bought his story about working with computers in the first place. There had to only be so many technology conferences around North America.

Then there was the business of sneaking around in the same hotel as his teammates were staying in, which he was beginning to realize was incredibly difficult and required a lot of foresight, both hiding Michael from them and them from Michael. He’d once even booked a second room on a different floor under a fake name. If his behavior was troubling to any of his teammates, none of them mentioned it, though Dany was convinced that most of them regarded him as something to avoid anyhow. He didn’t mind that as much he might have if Michael weren’t there to keep him company, and very well distracted.

Harder still than the hotel situation was the fact that more than once Dany had been sporting unexplainable cuts or bruises that Michael would touch carefully, raising an eyebrow in question. Sometimes he would ask, but he’d always abandon the topic quickly when Dany didn’t offer any more information than a nonchalant shrug. Besides, their visits were short and infrequent enough that neither of them were about to waste any time worrying about a few scratches. At least it’s what he tells himself.

“You know, soon, I won’t be traveling so much,” Dany lets it slip one day when the two of them are getting ready to head out to dinner. He’d been thinking about the end of the season and the bright side of knowing the Thrashers won’t be qualifying for the playoffs this year. The second it is out of his mouth, he tries to ignore what it implies, but he can feel Michael looking at him though. 

“Dany?” 

He coughs to clear his throat before he answers. “Ugh, yeah?”

“What do you _really_ do?” It’s so matter-of-fact that it catches him off guard. He’d half expected Michael to be upset that Dany has been clearly lying to him for well over a month, especially as they’d become more serious. 

“What do you mean?” He can play this off if he really tries.

“Dany, you can’t work the remote on my television and I have seen your laptop.”

“So? What’s wrong with my laptop?” 

“Nothing’s wrong with it, but for someone who works in computers and technology, I’d expect you to have something newer than that.” 

“I like the one I’ve got.”

The look on Michael’s face tells Dany all he needs to know. The other man is getting a lot of pleasure out of making him squirm. 

“Well, what about that?” Michael points to fading cut on his lower lip, courtesy of a high stick a few games back. “Did a computer bite you?” 

Dany cocks his hip and rolls his eyes. He knew this conversation was inevitable, especially once his life started to revolve more around Michael than going out to bars, though he still did occasionally. He just hadn’t expected Michael to tease him so mercilessly about it. One of his last bits of anonymity is unraveling before him and if he didn’t trust Michael so damned much, and he prays it’s not in err, he might be more scared than he is. 

“I just,” he takes a deep breath, “I don’t know. It’s not that easy.”

“What’s not that easy?” Michael rises from the hotel chair and walks to where Dany stands across the room. The warm hand closes around his wrist and tugs him back toward the unmade bed. 

The springs creak under their sudden combined weight. 

“You can trust me, you know. M’not about to out you.” Something in the way he says it makes Dany wonder if maybe Michael already knows. He hopes not; there are some things about himself that he’s not ready to share with Michael yet. 

“Don’t look me up,” he blurts suddenly. “Just, trust _me_ , okay? I don’t want you to look up my name or me or anything like that.” 

The look on Michael’s face changes and this doesn’t seem like such a good idea anymore. The joviality leaves the room in a rush. 

“Promise me, Michael. Please promise that you won’t. I’ll tell you everything, okay? Just, not yet.” 

This all feels so familiar; the hotel, the confession. He feels like he’s coming out all over again. 

“I promise I won’t. But,” there’s a comforting touch on his shoulder and Michael’s hand trails down his arm before lacing their fingers together, “Dany, can’t you please at least tell me why? Why would there be stuff about you to even look up?” 

“I don’t work in computers.” 

“I know.” 

“You know?”

“Well, I _assumed_ ,” Michael looks embarrassed. “I don’t really know.”

Dany huffs a breath and pulls away from the bed. His suitcase is shoved in the closet, still packed from the last roadtrip, and while he isn’t sure how to say the words, he thinks he can convey everything he wants to in one surefire way. 

It doesn’t take much rummaging to find what he’s looking for and he balls his jersey up in his hands and tosses it across the room to Michael before he can change his mind. 

He watches with bated breath as the other man slowly unfolds the familiar fabric and holds it up carefully. Recognition flashes over Michael’s face as he takes in the Thrashers logo before flipping it around. Nothing of their interactions to this point have led Dany to believe that Michael is a huge hockey fan, or even a fan at all, but he is a Canadian boy and Dany doesn’t doubt that he knows the team. Michael spreads the jersey out on his lap and traces the nameplate and numbers. 

He looks up finally with an unreadable expression and Dany is seconds from snatching it back and running away for good if Michael doesn’t give him some indication that he understands. 

“S’this yours?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit.”

“What?” Dany’s heart flutters in his chest and he feels like he might throw up. 

“This is…” Michael bites his lip hesitantly, but Dany has grown to recognize that devious sparkle in his eyes and it’s never been more welcome than right now, “… _really_ fucking hot.” His face lights up with a smile and he’s across the room in three strides, fistfuls of Dany’s curls, pulling him down as those lips find their way onto his. 

They reluctantly break apart and Dany opens his eyes to find Michael regarding him carefully.

“I promise I won’t tell, all right? And I won’t look you up. I told you that I trust you, and I mean that,” the corner of his mouth quirks, “I did even when I knew you were lying.” 

Dany’s so relieved he could cry, but he decides to show his appreciation another way.

They don’t make it to dinner.

 

**September 3rd, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dan is already in the lobby when Dany pulls up in the black Ferrari, parking in a visitor’s spot. 

“Figured we could walk to the Starbucks,” Dan gestures somewhere down the block but Dany is already shaking his head. 

He speaks over his shoulder as he locks the door. It takes him three times to get the key in, his fingers are shaking. “Naw, I was actually thinking we could go inside. Maybe.” 

This doesn’t feel like any sort of conversation for the parking lot and Dany finds himself pulling his hat down over his eyes. This feels clandestine already, but he can’t back out now. 

“You sure you’re okay, Heats?” 

“Yeah, m’good. Just, I think maybe inside might be better.” Dan nods and doesn’t protest anymore. 

The ride up the elevator is long and silent and Dany spends the majority of it wringing his hands behind his back and trying to calm his racing heart with practiced breaths. 

This is not the first time in his life that’s come out, and he’s about a hundred percent sure that it won’t be the last. But, this is the first time he’s committed to coming out to someone not with the last name ‘Heatley’ and it feels too important not to be nervous about. 

The ding makes Dany jump and he can feel Dan’s eyes on him, a question on his face. 

“So what’s up?” Dan wastes no time as he shuts the hotel door behind them. 

Dany sits down on one of the beds and takes in the suitcase and pile of laundry in the corner. He half expects Dan to sit next to him but instead he leans against the dresser, arms crossed over his chest in concern. 

“Well,” Dany picks at a piece of lint on his jeans. He pulls off his cap and rubs a hand through his hair, shaking out his matted curls. He cracks his knuckles. He does everything that he can to stall having to continue his sentence. 

“‘Well’ what, Dany? Just tell me.” 

“Before you moved in, I mean, if you still want to, I just thought that you should know, that, um.” He swallows down the lump forming in his throat and wipes his palms on his pants. “Well, I’m--I’m gay, so.” 

The room is eerily quiet and Dany squeezes the brim of his cap in his hand, watching as the cardboard bends into an exaggerated U.

“So…?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You said, ‘I’m gay so…’ So what? What were you going to say?” 

Dany finally looks up at Dan but he can’t read the expression on his face. 

“I’m gay so, if you want to find somewhere else to live, then you can. I just wanted you to know, you know, before you moved in and found out by accident or weren’t comfortable with it or whatever.”

He waits for what feels like hours before Dan finally reacts. And when he does, he laughs. Dan throws his head back and grips the edge of the dresser and _laughs_. Dany doesn’t know what to do. 

“Shit, Heats! I thought you were going to tell me that you were addicted to speed or runnin’ a fuckin’ drug ring or something! I don’t care if yer gay!” 

Dany hears himself shushing the other man; it’s still private and hearing it shouted in the tiny room makes him nervous. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Dan lowers his voice. “But, it’s not a big deal at all, all right?” 

“Well it is to me!” Dany snaps. He doesn’t know what he was expecting, but this seems too easy. He got himself all worked up over this and Dan is acting like it’s nothing. 

Dan’s face falls instantly. “I didn’t mean it like that, Dany. You’re right; of course it’s a big deal. Just, I mean, it doesn’t bother me if you are or if you aren’t.”

“You can’t tell _anyone_ , especially not the team,” the second surge of panic rises inside of him. If Dan doesn’t think it’s a big deal, he might let it slip without thinking about it. 

“Of course not! Not a word to anyone, okay? I promise.” 

“I’m just, I’m not ready for it to be… a thing.” Dany gestures abstractly with his hands before he looks back down at his hat. He doesn’t see Dan move, just feels the bed dip down beside him and the arm drape over his shoulders. 

“Your secret’s safe with me, roomie,” Dan flashes a tremendous grin and Dany can finally exhale.

 

**October 7th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

He’s lying down on the gurney as the sedative and anesthesia are administered through the IV. The ligaments in his knee are torn to pieces and this surgery has been scheduled for days. He wonders if at this point maybe the doctors aren’t just going through the motions; fixing him because they have to. 

As his eyes start to close on their own and his body goes heavy beyond his control, his spends his last bit of consciousness praying, like a coward, that he won’t wake up.

 

**April 9th, 2004  
Calgary, AB**

Dany doesn’t like to be alone. Truthfully, he never has but for a few brief periods in his life. And not that he can’t be alone if he needs to be, he’s really good about that, but he’s always needed some form of companionship or another to feel comfortable. 

Leaving Atlanta at the end of the season had felt like a release of energy and he’d spent the first week back in Calgary sleeping. The apartment he rented there had sat empty since he’d signed the lease as, until this summer, Dany had other places to be and people to see, bounding back and forth between Georgia and Wisconsin and wherever else his teammates, both current and former, happened to be at the time. 

Even just sleeping, the first night alone in the apartment, Dany felt uneasy. He called Michael the next day and convinced him to fly out and stay for a bit. 

Dany chases his own escape, is what his brother once told him, and it’s probably true. It certainly feels true when he thinks about what it might mean. Michael understands, because even for all the shit that Dany gives him, Michael has a remarkable intuition and he understands almost everything about Dany. 

The constant distance between them was the original catalyst. The travel, even before Michael knew what the travel was actually for, the upcoming World Championship that would send Dany to Europe for at least a month, and then Michael’s finals and graduation and the knowledge that graduate school was going to keep them apart for even longer.

Initially, they spent more time apart than together physically, which was a complaint they’d both had shared. Emotionally, Dany doesn’t think he could ever connect with someone the way he does Michael, though that is a card that he plays very close to his chest, still scared about what it might mean. 

Michael is the only person in the world that can see through him, he could from day one, and Dany knows that there’s a reason for this, but he’ll be damned if he could name it outright. 

The need to be someone else, _with_ someone else from time to time, not alone, was too powerful of a need for Dany to discard, and he’d never kept that Michael. He was fortunate in that Michael felt the same way, their physical relationship tempered by the constant distance. 

The day they’d decided, after the conversation, Dany walked around in a fog, unable to put his finger on what it was that made him not completely for the idea of an open relationship. 

That night, he felt like he’d managed to pinpoint it exactly. 

Michael moves on top of him, sweat-slicked and smiling as Dany pushes up into him and moans. His fingers spread out over Michael’s thighs, kneading the tight muscles there.

“I want you to be mine,” Dany manages to find enough sense to gasp out actual words as Michael rocks his hips in just the right, maddening way. 

He smiles down at Dany though slatted eyes. “How do you mean?” 

“I don’ want,” he grunts as Michael takes to moving for him, “anyone else to get to do this.” 

“To do what?”

“To fuck you.” He grips Michael’s thighs harder, possessively, and ruts his hips upward.

Michael lets out a breathy sound and Dany smiles. 

“Don’t want anyone to get to fuck you either.” Michael’s eyes are glassy, but the devilish gleam isn’t lost on Dany. “Yer ass is mine, Heater.” 

“S’usually not the context people tell me that,” he gives Michael a sloppy smile before grabbing him by the shoulders and surprising both of them by sitting up, Michael still straddling his lap. The joking is done; Dany knows that Michael can feel it, too. Their lips meet violently as Michael’s arms wrap around Dany’s neck and they rock into each other. 

“You know s’only yers,” Dany whispers against Michael’s lips. “S’only ever been yers. No one else will ever get to have that from me s’long as ‘m with you.”

“S-same.” Michael bites down on his lip and Dany moans. “Now shut up and fuck me.” He does.

 

**April 29th, 2004  
Prague, Czech Republic**

Being in Europe reminds him of being young in college, and Dany wonders if maybe that’s the only reason he’s been able to get through this so far, especially without his family and Michael by his side. Since his return to the league in February he’s barely been alone long enough to piss and as suffocating as it may seem to everyone else, he prefers it that way. When his own thoughts are the enemy, it’s just safer that way. 

It’s been somewhat familiar as far as his play is concerned, with everyone watching him like a hawk every time he takes the ice; the rain cloud above his head is apparently just as obvious to everyone else as it is to those that know him best. The press won’t talk to him about anything other than hockey, but he can see the questions behind their eyes, and his teammates shift around him carefully, like an invisible radius around his body is forcing them to keep their distance. 

They’re midway through the IIHF Tournament and he’s put up numbers that anyone would be proud of so far. But he still feels fragile. 

Every game feels like a test and Dany is embarrassed when he passes and ashamed when he fails. He celebrates each goal knowing the world’s eyes are on him. If he smiles too wide, will they judge him for forgetting? If he falls short of looking genuine, will they assume he’s broken? 

The pressure builds inside of his body until he wants to burst at the seams. It’s not enough to play the game anymore, and with every opportunity, he allows himself to be reminded of that.

**May 11th, 2004  
Prague, Czech Republic**

He tries to maintain his last bit of control, fighting against the warmth pooling through his body. His thigh muscles quiver like they do after a tough game and he concentrates on keeping still and quiet. It bothers him that he shakes like this, especially before they’ve really even started. It makes him feel delicate and small. But Michael loves it. 

“Dany, baby, don’t,” Michael warns, his voice soft in Dany’s ear. It’s followed by warm, wet lips and tongue working over his earlobe and biting at the skin just below. “Yer thinkin’ too much. Jus’ breathe,” Michael’s nose presses into the hollow of his neck and he inhales sharply before closing his lips around the thumping pulse and sucking. Michael had flown all the way out to Europe for a weeks visit after his finals, not just for this, but Dany couldn’t help but give in. 

Dany shuts his eyes and feels the slow twitching in his legs start to build again. 

“‘Ere ya go,” Michael growls into his neck. “S’been a while, gonna hurt if ya don’ relax.”

Michael is paused just this side of inside him and his choppy breathing is making it hard not to comply. The lube and sweat has their bodies gliding together easily and Dany wants this so badly he’s about to beg for it if he can find his voice. 

“Ready?” The calm voice speaks again. 

“Been ready,” Dany forces out the words and smirks despite himself. Teeth nip at his throat in response, but moments later, with one quick push, Michael begins to glide in. 

The air rushes from Dany lungs as he gapes helplessly, feeling each inch slide deeper. “Oh, fuck, Mike.” It comes out like a purr and Dany throws his head back as the warm throbbing envelops him. 

It has been a while, at least three weeks with the way the end of the season travel had worked out, not to mention Michael’s finals schedule, then the tournament overseas, but the wait was certainly worth it. 

Michael buries himself to the hilt and Dany feels the short staccato breaths puffing over his bared throat. 

“Missed you so much Dany, fucking so much.” Michael’s lips feel cool on Dany’s flushed skin and he pushes up into the man above him for more. His legs are still trembling uncontrollably and he locks his ankles at Michael’s lower back to try and keep from being too distracting. 

“Missed you, too.” The reprieve will be short, they both know; with the lockout looming, Dany had made it clear that he’d most likely be in Europe much longer than just a summer once September rolled around, but for now, this is enough. He tips his head back and allows himself to surrender.

 

**July 12th, 2004  
Calgary, AB**

Dany knows that he’s had too much to drink. Hell, he knew that three drinks ago, but he’s chasing his own blackout at this point and Michael seems to feel the exact moment when Dany decides to stop pretending. 

“Hey, what’s the matter?” Michael isn’t exactly sober himself but he’s far from drunk and the concern in his eyes is as frustrating to Dany as everything else. 

“Why the _fuck_ won’t you just ask me!?” 

Michael seems taken aback for a moment, but he barely skips a beat. His patience might be the most maddening part right now. “Ask you what?” 

“You fucking know what!” These last few months suddenly feel like nothing but waiting for the other shoe to drop; for Michael to see Dany for what he really is and disappear into the past. He wants to get this over with so he can be alone again. 

“Dany, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” 

“You do to! I know you do! Fuckin’ the whole world does, so why wouldn’t you!” He sits up fast enough to make his head spin, knocking the coffee table. What’s left of his beer spills across the glass tabletop. Michael scoots up, perched on the edge of the sofa cushion but that’s as close as he comes. Neither moves to clean the mess up. 

“Is something wrong?” Michael keeps his voice calm and even, but it does nothing to make Dany feel better, not this time.

“You tell me! Is there something? There _is_ fucking something!” He knows that Michael knows. He has to! 

“You’re drunk, all right? Calm down, it’s not worth getting upset over right now, whatever it is.” 

Every fiber in Dany’s body disagrees with that sentence so much that it actually aches in his chest. He sucks in a shuddering breath, his fists balling up at his sides. God help Michael if he decides to move an inch closer, Dany thinks as the bile builds up in his throat. 

“‘Whatever it is?’” Dany’s voice is eerily stable to his own ears and he sees the unsettled look on Michael’s face. 

“Dany, I swear to God I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry! I wish that I did but you’re not telling me. I can’t know if you won’t tell me.” 

“Fuck you!” He’s so mad he can’t see straight, though how much of that is the booze is another story altogether. Dany makes several swipes for the toppled bottle before it’s in his hands and he’s so fucking mad he could just—

—the bottle explodes as it hits the wall, the dregs of beer left streaking amber down the wallpaper before Dany makes the connection that it was him that threw it. He sees Michael jump out of the corner of his eye and the momentary satisfaction when he catches sight of the fear flickering across his face is quickly dowsed with a sickly recognition. 

God-fucking-damnit, he looks like Dan right now. Hands on the dash. He’s too drunk for this. 

The sound that breaks the silence is a pained wail and it takes him a minute to recognize it as his own. When he shuts his eyes, his head spins and it takes only the churning of his stomach for his knees to give out. 

He collapses on the couch, head lolling to rest on his lap. It’s too much. Everything is all just _too much_. The touch of a hand on his back startles him upright and he’s a fraction of a second away from throwing a devastating punch before he remembers that this is Michael. 

_Michael_ that is flinching away from him as his fist shakes, drawn back with bent elbow. His mind lurches forward slower than his body. 

He lowers his hands back down, palms resting on his thighs as Michael wipes away some tears that Dany didn’t even know he’d let slip. 

What’s worse than the fact that he realizes Michael is telling the truth about not knowing is the knowledge that he now has to be the one to tell him. 

The last bit of control he has in his body snaps and Dany slumps over in Michael’s lap, finally letting the tears come. He doesn’t deserve to lie. He doesn’t deserve any of this, not one moment of his life. 

‘You must let yourself feel every wretched thing.’

But he cannot find the strength to pull away from the warm arms and gentle whispers that wrap around him. No one should be allowed to touch him. He doesn’t deserve--

“I love you, I love you. Everything will be all right.” 

It won’t be, Dany thinks, but to hear those words from Michael, fuck it all, it helps. 

He stays up all night crying until he’s sober again, and Michael doesn’t let go once. Not until Dany’s eyes open and he doesn’t remember falling asleep on the couch does he realize that Michael hasn’t moved an inch. 

The pale blue eyes, bloodshot from not sleeping, peer down at him through a veil of lashes and Dany’s stomach flips with dread for the coming confrontation. His throat feels raw from sobbing and his temples pound with the rhythm of his heartbeat. He wonders if maybe he’s supposed to be embarrassed, but all he can be is sick right now and even that feels like too much. 

Michael opens his mouth to speak but nothing comes out before he’s closing it up again. 

All morning Dany waits for Michael to say what he’d wanted to say. When the moment finally comes, Michael doesn’t judge him, doesn’t ask him what the fuck that was all about. He doesn’t mention a moment of the breakdown at all except to kiss Dany’s forehead and whisper ‘Tell me when you’re ready.’

Three days later, Dany is.

 

**October 6th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

His mother had told him that a teammate was here to see him. Dany didn’t have the energy to protest. Once she’s gone from his room though, he feels alone. Desperately alone. 

He’s moments away from crying out for her like he did when he was little, but the door to his room opens slowly and the presence of another is as close to comfortable as he thinks he’ll ever be again. 

He’s taken something away from all of them, from everyone. He understands this more completely when Slava Kozlov looks at him from the doorway and Dany sees the haggard lines on the man’s face. He’s been crying. 

Dany has to look away. 

He counts the footsteps across the linoleum and listens as the chair creaks when Kozlov sits down.

He doesn’t want to be the first one to speak; he doesn’t know what to say. Kozzy leans forward, elbow resting on Dany’s bed and he clears his throat. 

“I will tell you,” Slava begins, clearing his throat again, as though the words are stuck somewhere inside of him. “Just listen. Can you do this?”

Dany nods, lips pursed as he tries to keep his face steady. 

“I was still in Russia, just a baby; only nineteen years old. We were late for practice. Me and--. I don’t remember, ah, not a whole lot of the day. I was speeding, didn’t want coach to be mad at me for being late; there was a blind left turn, they tell me.” 

Dany’s stomach drops. He doesn’t want to know. He doesn’t want to have to know. 

“In the hospital, they told me after, the car lost control, swerved off the road. I hit the windshield, face first. One day in a coma and I woke up. First thing, I ask about him, how he was doing after the accident. They tell me Kirill, my best friend, Kirill Tarasov. He hit the windshield, too. But he died right there on the road. Alone. 

"For years, it has been twelve years. For all of them, I am unhappy, angry. I was the driver. I was responsible. He trusts me to get him there and I fail him. In the worst way, I fail him. My fault.”

He goes silent and Dany can hear himself breathing shallowly. In and out, in and out. It seems like all he can do now is breathe and wait. Slava holds his head in his hands and speaks into his lap, "Why does this happen again? I don't want to see it again."

Dany feels like he’s witnessing his own initiation to some horrific club. Time crawls as he waits for Slava to say more, say anything. 

He isn’t sure how much time has passed when Kozlov finally looks him in the eye. “Dany,” he says it delicately, like this is the first time he’s ever used his first name, though with a strange twinge in his heart, Dany realizes that this may be the case. He feels a clammy warmth enveloping his hand and when he looks down, he’s surprised that he can see the Russian shaking as he takes Dany’s hand in his. 

“This will be in your head,” he bows down, swallowing hard and biting his lip as he pauses, “for the rest of your life.” 

Again the silence seems to stretch on for hours. The throbbing in Dany’s jaw gives him something to focus on as Slava blinks back the tears in his eyes. Dany wonders if maybe he should cry too, if his silence is damning. But he’s too numb, has cried for too long already to do anything at the moment. 

Slava finally speaks as though with a sudden, great realization. “There are only broken words for a shattered man,” he mumbles, shaking his head, and the expression on his face looks so private Dany isn’t sure that the words are even meant for him. 

“There are people, friends. Family. They will tell you ‘it gets easier.’” His accent is thick and lilting. “They are lying. It will not get easier. You will never wake up one morning and feel better about yourself than the day before. But, one day, you will come to live with this. And when you do, those same people, your friends, your family, they will mistake this acceptance for ‘easier’. But they will be wrong.

“Your life from this moment onward will be in two parts. You will have ‘before’ and you will have ‘after’. It will never go back to ‘before’. You will never be who you were.”

The hand clutching his own squeezes and Dany feels himself squeezing back. He wants to comfort his teammate, wants him to stop talking, stop crying. Tell him this isn’t a wound that he need open. This moment he’s referring to, this person that he thinks Dany is now, none of it feels real enough yet. The ‘you’ that Slava keeps mentioning is not familiar enough to be a ‘me’. Dany bites his lip until he can taste blood, reopening the split, but Kozlov starts to speak again and he barely has time to be distracted. 

“As difficult as that may be to hear, I haven’t come to heal you. Those that come to do that are not your friends. You are not theirs to fix. No one will fix this, not even you. Not even time. The best thing that you can do now, the only thing that you can do, is to be honest about how you are feeling to them and especially to yourself. And Dany, _solnyshko_ , you must feel. You must let yourself feel every wretched thing.”

Kozlov exhales and bows his head. Dany waits for him to say more even as the words already spoken swirl around inside his muddled brain and fall just short of sorting themselves out. His heart breaks all over again in the meantime, and Slava doesn’t say another word; he just holds on. 

Dany can see Kozlov’s shoulders shaking slightly as the broken man before him allows himself to feel this own wretched things.

 

**July 16th, 2004  
Calgary, AB**

“One day I’ll teach you to cook more than just macaroni,” Michael pinches Dany playfully, “then you can be the one cooking _me_ dinner.”

“Maybe one day,” Dany agrees, reclining back onto Michael’s lap and closing his eyes when the fingers tangle up in his hair. “But why rush that, ya know? When you’re obviously the better chef already.” He feels the playful tug on one of his curls and opens his eyes up to Michael’s face. 

He’s smiling, but the shadows under his eyes tell Dany all of the worry hidden just below the surface. 

“Mike--,” the words are all there, somewhere in his mind, everything that he wants or needs to say just swirling around the whirlpool of his thoughts but—he doesn’t know where to even begin. 

“Dany, I told you, when you’re ready.” Sometimes Dany hates that Michael can see right through him. 

“I am. I am ready. I just, I--,” he opens and closes his mouth and nothing comes out but a squeak of nonsense. “This is never—this is not something I’ve ever had to tell before.” 

Dany sits up abruptly, but doesn’t even flinch when Michael’s fingers rip lose from his hair. He turns to sit cross-legged facing the other man but he can’t meet Michael’s eyes. He doesn’t want to see his face when he admits what he is; what he’s done. 

Michael is picking strands of Dany’s knotted curls from where they’ve twisted around his fingers. Dany watches as he drops them one by one to the floor. He has the urge to pick them back up, like part of himself is being discarded. 

“I--,” his throat nearly closes up as he tries to speak, “I killed him.” 

Breathe in, breathe out. 

“I killed him. It was my fault. I killed him.” 

“Dany--,” Michael reaches to touch him but Dany pulls away. It’s not supposed to happen like this. Michael is supposed to look appalled, not empathetic.

“Don’t! You can’t touch me!” Dany’s head throbs as his tries to keep the memories at bay, as though he could ever talk about it without reliving it.

“I—please. I don’t understand.” 

“I killed him! Aren’t you listening to me?! I killed him! I’m a murderer!” Dany shouts the word he’s kept in secret for himself and he swears he can see it in the air, hovering between the two of them. He’s never said it out loud before, not even alone, and the moment it escapes his subconscious, he feels it haunting him. 

“You’re not.” Michael sounds far away; Dany’s head spins.

“How can you say that if you don’t even know? I am! Don’t tell me you can’t see that!” He sounds hysterical to his own ears but the words are coming a mile a minute now and he can’t shut up the voice in his head. More, more, faster. “That’s all this is! That’s what happened and that’s the fucking word for it, Michael! He’s not alive anymore and it’s my fucking fault so what the hell does it make me?! What does it make me if not a mur--,”

“Dany!” The other man’s voice screams loud enough to shut him up. He can hear the tears in Michael’s voice and that’s the only thing that makes him look. The expression on his face is enough to knock the rest of the air out of Dany’s lungs. “Dany, I don’t understand! Please! Just tell me what happened!” 

He can’t. None of this is so easy that he can just say the words; and maybe the words don’t exist anywhere for this. He’s not sure that what he has are even feelings. Maybe it’s all just pieces of things that jaggedly try to fit together and create some semblance of a reality leftover. His reality. 

He’s felt just as out of control of his life as he did the car, screeching and skidding in slow motion and he’s only gritting his teeth and closing his eyes and bracing for the impact. It’s all just bits and pieces and things he heard from other people: memories that might be real or might only exist because he needs them to be there, _needs_ to have the answers to these types of questions. 

More than anything, Dany wants to be able to explain how the smell of mulch makes his heart and jaw ache. He wants to have words for the hollowness in his ribcage when he catches himself smiling after a goal, and the way he chokes when his seatbelt tightens even slightly. 

He wants to explain why he’s hidden all the old pictures of himself, and why he has to stare at his feet when he passes the family photos that line the walls in his parents’ house in Calgary; how they make him sick, how he wants to scream at that stupid boy with the easy, genuine smile, who feels like someone else sometimes he’s so far removed from it now. 

He doesn’t have words for the feelings that come with remembering. And maybe if he did, he’d finally be able to breathe again, really breathe again for the first time, but -- 

“I was going too fast, too fucking fast, on purpose!” This is a fact. He knows this, the police, his father, they have told him this. 

The first time he looked in the mirror after the accident, he’d hobbled to the bathroom in his house. He glanced up by accident. His mother found him thirty minutes later, dry-heaving into the sink, tearing all the stitches in his gums until he was spitting blood.

“On purpose?”

For a week after his parents flew home and he was alone again, he took the stairs without his crutches and brace; the shooting pain in his leg radiated outward until he finally collapsed at the top. Sometimes he would try to crawl the rest of the way to his bedroom, putting all his weight on his knees. He liked knowing if he needed the crutches, he’d have to make his way back to them first. 

“To get home before—way too fast. And fucking, out of nowhere, another car. I-I think.” He closes his eyes and the memory is still just this side of existing. “And I tried to—I turned but. I killed him.” 

“The other driver?” Michael’s voice is delicate, like glass. Dany opens his eyes. He breathes. 

“No, Michael! _Dan_! Fucking Dan! Next to me, my fucking—my best friend. Next to me. In my car. In my fucking car. _Dan_. I killed my best friend.” 

And like that, everything shatters. 

“Oh, Dany.”

“I said don’t touch me!” 

“Dany, my love, it was an accident, Dany. You’re not a murderer.”

“It doesn’t _matter_! Don’t you see that! It doesn’t matter what it was! It doesn’t change what happened.” 

Why can’t anyone understand that?

 

**October 5th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

The touch on his shoulder wakes him up so slowly he can practically feel each part of his brain whirring back into consciousness. The last part that emerges from his dreamless sleep wills him to open his eyes against the crackling fluorescents. 

He knows enough to wish that he hadn’t when he sees his mother and notices she’s not alone. He sees Lu Anne’s face and his stomach drops. 

Her cheeks are mottled pink and she frowns as she grabs for his hands, her clammy palms slipping over his skin before she finally finds a hold. He’s instantly awake now, panic rising. Shut this out, go back in time. He’s hyperventilating before either even opens her mouth. 

“No.” It comes out in a pathetic whine. His mother brushes a hand through his dirty, matted curls, pressed limp by the hospital bed. The rush of blood in his ears is starting to blur the corners of his vision and his head spins.

“He’s gone, sweetheart. Danny didn’t make it.” 

He trains his eyes on Lu Anne, she dips her head low in confirmation. 

Dany is breathing too hard and too fast to answer.

 

**November 20th, 2004  
Bern, Switzerland**

When Dany looks in the mirror, he doesn’t even recognize himself at first. 

It’s exhilarating. 

He turns off the bathroom light and watches as his right eye dilates, wide and black in the dim light. The old him stares back with a scared look. 

Another flick of his wrist and the bathroom is flooded with light. He squints against it at first, but another look in the mirror and it’s that face he does not know. Not scared, _scary_.

He smiles. 

He feels new.

 

**November 20th, 2004  
Bern, Switzerland**

He’s whispering into the phone even though he’s alone in his apartment. It’s late enough, or rather, at 4 a.m., early enough, he feels like he should be talking quietly. Briere had made clear his plans to stay the night in Zurich after the game, the first without Dany, but having his personal space back was making Dany itch for some other forms of companionship. Michael’s phone call had been a very welcome distraction from his non-sleep. 

“How’s it look?” Michael’s voice is amused, but tinged with worry that Dany can tell he’s trying to mask. 

“Weird,” Dany can only laugh. 

“And it’s never going to go back to how it was?”

“Naw, the doctor said that it’s totally blown. Something about the muscle that controls the iris, torn or something.”

“Jesus, Dany. That sounds really painful.”

“Well, not now it isn’t. Believe me, Briere won’t shut up about how sorry he is. Like I don’t know it was an accident, even if it is a permanent one.”

“Permanent? It really won’t ever go back?”

“Don’t think so.” Pause. “D’you think you’ll still want me?”

There’s a quiet breathy laugh over the receiver and Michael sounds a lot further than six hours away. 

“’Course I do, Dany.”

“But, you haven’t even seen--,”

“Doesn’t matter.” 

Dany smiles so wide he’s embarrassed, but his breathing is his only answer and after a bit, Michael speaks again. 

“What do the Swiss boys think of it?” 

Dany scoffs. “’M way too bruised up to be out and about right now.” 

“Out of commission then? Even with all that space to yourself finally?” 

Dany catches himself nodding in response. “Eh, yeah.” 

“Pity. Doesn’t mean you can’t look.”

“With my one good eye maybe,” he scoffs. “‘Sides, I haven’t left the apartment in a week.” 

Michael hums in disapproval; Dany knows that Michael doesn’t like it when he spends too much time alone, and truth be told, Dany doesn’t like it either: too much time to think. 

“Doesn’t mean _they_ can’t look.” 

“Sorry. Doctor’s orders,” Dany protests smugly. “But what about you?” It’s as if his body suddenly realizes how long it’s been, and simply the rumble of his own words in his chest is enough to get him half-hard. 

“What about me?” Michael plays dumb but his voice gets huskier as well. Dany smiles as he makes his way from his living room to his bedroom. 

“You been out having fun?” The bed squeaks under his weight as he lays out flat in top of the comforter, sweatpants slung low on his hips, worn t-shirt riding up to his navel as the mattress dips under him. 

“Once or twice,” Michael’s voice catches in his throat and Dany loves that they always seem to be on the same page when it comes to moments like these. 

“Tell me about him. Please,” he’s already got the phone smashed up against his shoulder and ear as his fingers stroke at the exposed band of skin. He strokes his thumb over the pale patch of curls leading down from his bellybutton, watching how they bend under the weight of his finger. 

“A few inches shorter than you, dark auburn hair--,”

“What color is that?” 

Michael laughs gruffly and just the sound makes Dany’s cock twitch. “Like a dark brown-red. And big brown eyes.”

“What was his name,” Dany’s fingers slip under the waistband of his sweats but freeze there. 

“Don’t remember.”

“Good,” Dany bites his lip. “D’you take him home?” 

“What are you wearing?” Michael ignores Dany’s question. “And before you say anything, the only right answer is ‘nothing’.” 

Dany lets out a gravelly laugh, his mouth curling into a smile. He misses Michael so much it aches sometimes. None of the boys he’s brought home in the meantime are good enough to fill that hole, and he loves that Michael feels the same. 

“Gimme a sec,” Dany is already shimmying out of his sweats and boxers, shucking his t-shirt off and throwing to the floor. It’s warm in the apartment, the heat on full blast, already condensing up the bedroom windows and Dany feels completely alone in the world; no one else on the face of the Earth but Michael. 

“Y’good?” Michael’s voice is breathy and Dany knows he’s in much the same position right now in his dorm in Kelowna. 

“Yeah. D’you let him fuck you?” Dany doesn’t want to mince words, not tonight. He hasn’t done this for a long time and he’s chasing his release already. 

“Dany,” Michael sighs in feigned exasperation. “The only person allowed ta fuck me is you, you know that.” 

Dany’s smile curls up, lips over teeth. That’s exactly what he wanted to hear. 

“Go on, then.” 

“Well,” Michael inhales sharply and Dany pictures Michael’s hand wrapping around his cock, stroking up to the tip as he relives the details. “He had a good mouth.” 

Dany groans, finally wrapping his hand around his own length. His hips jump up expectantly and he really wishes Michael were here next to him. 

Michael exhales loudly as he speaks. “Got back to his apartment and he was on his knees for me in a second.” 

“Fuck, Mike.” He strokes to keep up with the images flashing in his mind. 

“Couldn’t take me near as deep as you can, but he fuckin’ tried.” 

“I’d kill ta taste ya right now,” Dany’s back arches off the mattress and he pinches his eyes shut harder and pictures it in his head: himself on his knees in front of Michael, sucking him as hard as he wants to after all these weeks apart. How those fingers would twist up in his hair and pull just enough to bring a twinge of pain. 

“God, me too, Dany.” Dany lets his legs fall open as he thrusts wantonly into the air; nothing to be embarrassed by here, no one to see him this exposed. The sound of Michael’s voice is almost too much after this long and he wants to be ashamed of the tears in his eyes. “Fuckin’ miss you so—oh—much,” Michael’s voice catches and Dany bites his lip.

“You swear too much,” Dany chuckles, rubbing his thumb over the slit, picturing Michael’s face, flushed and smiling. 

“You love it when I talk like that.” Dany cedes his loss there, fisting himself faster. 

“Talk to me,” Dany finally exhales. His faltering, panting breaths echo in the room. 

“I miss you, I want you. I love you.” Maybe Michael is crying, too. “Come for me.” 

He does, stars bursting behind his eyes, a quiet sob on his lips. “L’you too,” he slurs as he spills across his chest, hearing Michael following behind him. 

They breathe in arrhythmic synchronicity for a long while until Dany can hear Michael falling asleep. 

“Come home,” the man pleads with one of his last rational thoughts before sleep. 

The idea of home is foreign to his mind and Dany cringes at his own aversion to the thought of coming back to whatever it is he could truthfully even think of as ‘home’. 

“Soon,” he promises, but even he can hear the lie in his voice.

 

**September 29th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dany feels like he’s lying on a pile of gravel. Maybe he’s hungover, though he can’t remember even drinking. But God, the way his head is throbbing…

Maybe he’s on the ice, leveled by a hit or a punch. His feet are cold and everything feels heavy. He knows he needs to stay still and wait for the trainer. The ice smells like pine needles and wet leaves. 

He can’t open his eyes. Something with a sharp corner digs into his spine and this might not hurt so much if he could just breathe properly, take this compression off his back. He tries to roll over (he knows that he shouldn’t), but his body won’t move, won’t cooperate with the instructions he screams at it in his mind. His chest feels ripped open and he can’t catch his breath. 

He thinks he hears himself gasping as he tries to fill his lungs, or maybe that’s tires on pavement. 

Everything smells like rubber and hissing, twisted metal and the trainer still hasn’t come yet. Something is wrong. 

Dany tries to call for help but he can’t shut his mouth, can’t form the words. It comes out as a groan, and fuck why can’t he move his jaw! What the fuck is going on! The panic seeps into his bones and why the _fuck_ won’t his mouth shut?!

He feels trapped in a spider web, the tangles of tiny threads closing in around him and he tries to kick to break free of this feeling of crawling all over him but his knee feels on fire and there’s someone screaming something at him from maybe a million miles away.

Tiny yellow fairy lights flash through the thin skin of his eyelids but it does nothing to quell the terror bubbling inside of him. He can feel time passing; each second hurts as it rips through his body and crackles frayed nerves to life.

He hears a sound that he recognizes as his voice, a rasping moan that fades the moment it leaves his permanently-parted lips. 

Everything is underwater where he is; the ice is melting all around him and sinks deeper into the growing ocean. He can’t move his arms or legs, his face is throbbing. He can only breathe in water when he tries and the edges of his mind are slowly creeping back into blackness. 

Maybe he’s dead. 

No. He can’t be dead. It hurts too much. 

**March 10th, 2005  
Kazan, Russian Federation**

Dany could get used to this, he thinks. He’s always been a good traveler, and there’s something amazing about waking up in a new place, with new people. No one here that knows anything about who he is, or where he’s come from. 

Or what he’s done. 

He’s being far too optimistic, he knows. For one, Ilya knows practically every little thing about him down to the way he takes his coffee and the way he likes his eggs in the morning, and Slava has him practically memorized from the inside out. It’s the indifference from the rest of them that he thrives on. 

No one here looks at him like he might shatter into a million pieces with a slight breeze; they don’t know what he was like before and nothing to compare him to. There hasn’t been a single phone call just to ‘check in’, and not once has anyone asked him ‘are you okay’ when he only so much as sighs. 

After the surgery to repair his eye, Dany had been anxious to get away from the Swiss apartment. He’d felt cooped up from his weeks of recovery and he didn’t like the way Briere had started looked at him when he walked around their apartment; a constant mixture of pity and remorse. There were only so many apologies that Dany could hear before he started getting angry. He didn’t need that hanging over him; especially not now that he was a New Person. 

He’d flown back the States for his hearing in February and it was the first time he’d been back to Atlanta since the end of last season. He’d stayed in a hotel with his parents; his house didn’t feel like it belonged to him anymore. He’d asked Michael not to come.

But now here he is, he thinks, in Russia. One glance around the locker room and he’s grinning like an idiot. He can’t understand 99% of the things being said, and what he can understand has nothing to do with him at all. 

It’s all ahead of him now. There’s a tiny realist voice in the back of his head that likes to remind him at the most inopportune moments that this new Dany is all just temporary. When the lockout is over, it’s back to the grind. 

His skate is halfway off his foot when the voice speaks up again loudly from inside of him. He still has to go back there. Back to Atlanta. 

The realization hits him like a bucket of ice water. It had been so easy before to think of ‘back there’ as ‘back to the NHL’. It hadn’t been such a specific, tangible thing to him yet. Even when he had been back in the city, hockey hadn’t been a part of it. 

He has to return to his house, to Philips Arena. 

Just the thought of having to step foot back into that locker room is enough to make him want to throw up. If he closes his eyes, he can picture it. Exactly where his stall is, equipment still neatly placed. He knows the route to the arena by heart, every fucking twist and turn on the roads back to his house. (Lenox Road, the rows of fir trees and condominiums that loom as tall as skyscrapers in his memory.)

His stomach churns. The voices around him are foreign and muffled as the room swallows him up. He feels like he’s choking on his own tongue, his mouth is too dry and his throat is too narrow and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe. Again.

Vinnie Lecavalier places a hand on his shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Fuck.

 

**October 5th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” He squeezes Lu Anne’s hand. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

She squeezes back. “You have nothing to be sorry for. We forgive you.” 

But, he wants to protest, it’s not enough. That’s not enough. He cannot forgive _himself_.

“I’m so sorry.”

 

**May 15st, 2005  
Vienna, Austria **

Canada loses the World Championship game and Dany goes back to his hotel room with the silver medal tucked into his bag. He doesn’t take it out, doesn’t even set the bag down, his fist locked around the nylon strap in a vice grip. 

He’s not sure how long he’s been back here even, he barely remembers the last two hours, the final period, buzzer, handshakes and medals, press, undressing, redressing. It all bleeds together like any other game. He didn’t even want the medal, had stuffed it in his pocket between the locker room and the pressroom so he didn’t have to see it hanging around his neck. It felt like a noose.

He wanders around the room alone, the gym bag still swinging at his side, bumping into his legs. 

His feels the buzz of his phone in his jacket pocket and the vibrations thrum through his entire body. 

_‘Shouldn’t you be in jail?’_

Vokoun spat at him through the bars of his mask, a crooked grin on his face as he spoke and something inside Dany snapped. He lunged for the man, grabbing anything he could, jersey, mask, gear. He could hear himself swearing as he did and he felt the hands around him that tried to hold him back. Vokoun looked scared and it mades Dany want to hurt him all the more. The refs screamed at him as they pried his fingers off of the goaltender, twisting until his knuckles popped and he finally let go. 

After they tossed him from the game, he’s numb. He inhaled, exhaled, looked at the clock. He didn’t feel better afterwards.

Dany can’t extricate himself from his head, his fist tightening more about around the bag as he flashes back through the memory. He feels himself nodding along to nothing. He misses Russia; Ilya and Slava were close enough but far away there and it was safe. He doesn’t feel that way anymore, especially not with Atlanta hanging over him like a nightmare he can’t shake off, can’t wake up from. 

The voice in his head speaks up again; you should be in jail, Dany. He wonders if this might not be the last time he hears mention of it on the ice. His stomach lurches.

Dany grabs for his cellphone, ignoring the missed call from his father and searches for the name he wants. He should be in jail. His knees buckle and he hears the clank of the medal in his bag as it drops to the floor. 

Slava answers on the second ring, but when the first thing out of Dany’s mouth is ‘what if’, Kozlov shushes him. 

“No, Dany. Don’t do that.”

 

**May 18th, 2005  
Vienna, Austria **

The waiting is the hard part, Dany thinks. His Superleague season is long over, the World Championships are behind him, and he will be the first to admit that his showing in each was poor by the kindest stretch of the word. 

He heard the talk of his coordination, dedication; whether or not he’d ever be the player he was before. Everyone says ‘before’ in the abstract, like they’re afraid to pinpoint one moment. Before his accident; before his eye got fucked. 

But he doesn’t want to go home to prove them wrong. Home, wherever that is. It doesn’t feel like Atlanta anymore. It doesn’t feel like Russia or Austria, or even Calgary after all this time.

His hotel room is still littered with clothing from his suitcase, but his silver medal hasn’t moved from the bottom of his gym bag. He’s dragging his feet about leaving, already booked the room for another week, long after all of his teammates and opponents have headed back to wherever they call home. 

He feels as though he’s entered into a different world in Europe, with the New Dany. The new face, the constantly changing scenery; he’s never stuck in one place long enough to get tied down by the commitment. This Dany has no home, no responsibilities. He isn’t recognized as anything but another warm body by the boys here and it’s easy to come and go. 

He has to constantly remind himself all of the things he’ll miss if he stays and it’s ultimately the only reason that he’s sure he won’t. 

His parents, his brother. Michael. Hockey.

He has to go back, but it is with a sudden, life-changing realization, when he thinks about how easy it was to leave Switzerland and Russia, that it becomes clear it doesn’t have to be to Atlanta. 

It takes all of the courage he has in his entire being to make the call to the people he’d needs to explain this to most of all and he does it before he can second guess himself. He feels guilty, unbelievably and unforgivably guilty as the tinny noise fills his ears. 

The answering machine picks up after the seventh ring. He holds his breath as he waits and counts. They’ve had the same message for years and Dany knows it by heart now. 

“Hello, you have reached Graham,” the voice is rich and as familiar to him as his own father.

There is a shuffling as the phone is handed off, “Lu Anne!” She’s cheery and breathless, like they’ve been recording this over and over, trying to get it perfectly. Pause.

“Jake!” Pause. Dany holds his breath as his heart thunders in his chest. 

“Dan!” Everything in the world stops. Except for the fact that it doesn’t.

“And Erika Snyder! We’re not home right now, but if you leave a message! We’ll call you right back when we can.”

They all shout ‘goodbye’ in unison and Dany’s throat closes up. He can’t speak, not even after the beep sounds, harsh in his drumming ears. His mouth opens and he wants to say something, _anything_. 

But, his hand slams down the phone before he can.

 

**October 5th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

His parents had bowed out of the room, leaving him a private moment with Lu Anne that scares him to the core the second they’re alone. 

He wants to apologize again but he’s already spent what feels like hours crying those words into her blouse and her protestations are starting to wash right over him. There aren’t enough sorrys in the world to change the past and he’s starting to realize this all over again. 

“All that I ask,” she starts carefully, her voice coarse with her own stifled sobs, “is that you don’t let this destroy you.” 

He wants to laugh at that idea, how absurd it seems, his life going on after this with any semblance of normalcy, but the genuineness of her face is enough to make him consider her words. 

“You can’t let this be the end for you, Dany. It’s not what Dan would have wanted, and it’s not what we want either. I want you to promise me that, please. That you won’t stop playing.” 

He touches his shredded knee without thinking, well aware that there were more than just physical reasons he might not come back to hockey this season. Or ever. He scoffs aloud. 

“I mean it, Daniel,” she’s practically scolding him. “There’s no sense in ending two careers.” She doesn’t say it with any bitterness, not a single undertone of resentment or anger and that is what breaks him down. 

“I promise.” His voice sounds like his larynx has been raked over coals and his mouth feels dry and thick, but he means the words he says. If she can stand to hold his hand after all he’s done, he can make this promise.

 

**August 9th, 2005  
Vancouver, BC**

Dany waits until Michael is in the shower to call. He’s forced it to be inevitable at this point; he’d taken a bath selling his Buckhead house over the summer, furnished no less, though he was grateful it was gone either way. He’s been setting the stones for this since that May night in Vienna.

Maybe the organization has already read the writing on the wall; everything Dany owned was in a storage shed on his parent’s property in Calgary and he’d been practically squatting at Michael’s for weeks, avoiding his teammates and management.

He’d needed the company and companionship, and Michael had helped him rehearse what to say when the time came to let Atlanta know what he wanted. They practiced the right words, the proper approach, assuring everything would work out in an agreeable way. 

Dany’s fingers dial Don Waddell’s number by heart; he’s been staring at it for hours this summer, working up the courage to call. Don answers on the second ring and every bit of preparation is suddenly for naught when he hears the paternal sigh of his own name as a greeting.

“I can’t come back there. To Atlanta.” It’s out of him in a rush and his stomach knots; he’s embarrassed when he starts to cry. “Please, I can’t go back.” 

Don inhales sharply. “Oh, my son.” 

And Dany loses what composure he had left.

 

**August 23rd, 2005  
Kelowna, BC**

The call comes at nearly midnight on Michael’s twenty-fourth birthday, two days after he’d moved out of graduate housing at UBCO in into his own place. Dany’s cell buzzes on the nightstand as the two lay curled together in an afterglow, celebrating two momentous occasions at once. 

Dany sits up instantly when he reads the name and Michael moves away from him subtly when his tone drops into something serious. 

He listens best he can though his brain is running a mile a minute as he tries to keep up with Waddell. He hears himself utter several dozen terse thank yous and he keeps saying ‘sir’ after almost everything. Finally, the conversation is over and hangs up, left to wonder what he thinks about this, sifting through the muddled feelings that overwhelm him. 

“They traded me.” 

Michael looks at him with wide eyes, the icy blue nearly glowing in the dim light. 

“Oh?” Dany can tell he’s trying not to sound hopeful or disappointed, his eyes flickering to read Dany’s own expression. “That was fast.”

Neither of them moves closer to the other, but Michael sits up taller and folds his hands carefully. 

“To Ottawa,” Dany whispers in the quiet dark, answering the question Michael didn’t ask. He bows his head and watches as the other man’s fingers twist together. 

“That’s good?” He’s treading painfully lightly. “It’s Canada,” he offers. “And closer to your parents.”

“And you.” 

“Yeah.” Michael inhales sharply. “Are you happy?”

Dany chances a glance toward the other man, the longing question on his face. There’s not a doubt in his mind that Michael wants nothing but the best for him, but to see it so openly in the man’s expression takes his breath away. 

“I’m very happy.” The smile breaks over his face and he couldn’t hold it back now if he tried. His arms wrap around Michael and he feels like a page has turned. The familiar dark presence in his mind speaks up again after so long that maybe a change in scenery is all he needs to start putting everything in the past. Maybe this time. Maybe now. 

This he does not tell Michael.

 

**September 9th, 2005  
Ottawa, ON**

Dany’s new apartment is sterilely white. The walls and the kitchen and the bathroom tiles. It reminded him of a blank canvas the moment he walked in the door and he’d signed the lease almost immediately. 

Michael had commented on it when he was helping Dany move in, wondered aloud if he’d thought about painting the place, adding some color. Dany said he would consider it, but something about painting made it seem too permanent too quickly. 

It had taken two weeks for the two of them to unpack all of Dany’s things but the time alone together was invaluable before the NHL season started up again. 

They’d already christened the bed several times since the first night, but the first time after all of the packing is finished feels like the most culminating. 

Dany is ready for his new season, his new team, but he’s not ready to give up Michael. His second year of graduate school at UBCO would be starting at the same time as Dany’s season and visits would once again be sparse. 

The comforter pools around their waists and Dany shivers, choosing to curl up tighter against Michael’s side rather than use the blanket. He had been so good about being on his own in Europe, it felt natural; he’d needed the break from everything and everyone. Dany feels the sting of tears behind his eyes as he thinks about what it will be like his first night alone in this apartment, if he’ll be able to do it. Being here, back in the NHL, back in _Canada_ , was different; it was too much like going home. Home without the most important parts of himself. 

Michael’s arms wrap tighter around him and his breathing has almost evened out entirely when a knot of insecurity inside Dany tightens without warning. 

“Why do you love me?” 

“M’sorry?” He still sounds groggy.

“Why do you love me, Michael? I don’t understand why.”

“Dany,” Michael sounds defeated and Dany hates himself for ever asking, but he can’t rest now without an answer. 

“Please tell me.” 

“I don’t even know where to begin, Dany.”

“Would you ever lie to me?”

Pause. “Never to hurt you.” Dany is surprised that this confession is actually comforting. 

“Then just tell me.”

He rests his head on Michael’s shoulder and listens to his heartbeat through the thin skin. There’s a rumble that begins in Michael’s chest before he even speaks and it reminds Dany of a cat purring. 

“I love you because your laugh is infectious, because you always want to be better. I love you because you are strong, and you are thoughtful. Because you always remind me of things that I’ve forgotten, like my damned car keys. Because you look out for me.” 

Michael twists one of Dany’s curls around his finger absently, shaping it into a perfect spiral. His hair is shorter now than it was, and even when it pulls just a bit too hard on his scalp, Dany doesn’t say a word. 

“I love you because you have freckles on your neck and, like, nowhere else, and because your ass is just, un-fucking-real.” Dany smiles despite himself, the moisture in his eyes threatening to spill. “An’ ‘cause you aren’t afraid to tell me when I’m being difficult, and you let me get close to you even when you don’t want me to.

“I love you because you are beautiful to watch out on the ice; the way you move and the way you dedicate yourself. And because your eyes don’t match anymore, and you ruin almost every picture we take when the flash goes off,” Michael’s voice is wavering with a stifled laugh, but Dany can hear that he’s trying not to cry as well. 

“Because you swear like a sailor and you can’t hold your liquor even though you pretend that you can. Because you never get lost and you always order the best dish on the menu no matter what restaurant we happen to go to, even if we’ve never been there before.

“I love you because you’re ferociously Canadian and because you call your mom every week without her ever having to remind you. I love you because you aren’t afraid to be scared and because you let me see you cry. I love you because you only let me inside of you, in more ways than one. I love you because you are a good person, and because you love me.” 

Only twenty more days, his stomach churns despite Michael’s words. He’s not a good person. 

When Dany cracks, he tends to crumble and Michael must feel it coming because the hand in his hair falls away and both arms wrap around him tightly again. 

“Do you--,” Dany’s chest tightens and he coughs. “Do you think I’ll ever be forgiven?”

“Oh, Dany.” Michael sounds pathetically small and it makes Dany ache to think he’s hurting those around him just by being in their lives. Only twenty more days.

“Lie to me if you have to,” the wet tracks down his cheeks bleed onto Michael’s bare chest and Dany doesn’t mean to cry all over his boyfriend, he really doesn’t. He just needs to hear someone say it; give him a good answer, even if they don’t mean it. Through all the bullshit, Dany is sure he’d be able to hear the truth anyhow, whether or not Michael chose to lie. 

“I don’t need to lie, my love. You’ve already been forgiven.” 

“I don’t mean by,” he huffs like an impatient child when the words escape him. The ones he does have seem remarkably stupid and inconsequential. 

“You mean forgiven by yourself.” It’s not a question and Dany bites his lip. That’s really only the half of it. 

“Or maybe. I don’t know,” he trails off again. For the millionth time in his life, he has the question but is scared of the answer. He traces numbers in digits on Michael’s belly, and then he switches to longhand when Michael still hasn’t finished his sentence for him. Fifteen, thirty-seven, nine-twenty-nine. Not this time; this silence is his to fill. 

He sucks in more air than his lungs can fit and it burns in his chest until he finally lets go. Dany closes his eyes against the ragged hitches of his own voice. “D’you think Dan forgives me?” 

The moment that he finds he remembers the most is when he laces his skates before a game. His mind tends to wander as his fingers work to complete a task he’s done so many times in his life it’s become like blinking. 

But it’s when he closes his eyes and breathes in the sweat and the deodorizer and the cold, he wonders if this is what Dan would have wanted. If _he_ would have expected Dany to play again. To play for the both of them, earn twice the accolades. 

Like lacing his skates, there are things that Dany doesn’t need to be reminded of to know implicitly. His home phone number from when he was little. How to brace himself along the boards when he fights for a puck. His brother’s laugh and the taste of his father’s barbeque ribs. The sound Michael makes when he’s dreaming about something scary. And how to carry the weight of two men. 

But, he is always afraid that just because he doesn’t like to remember, everyone assumes he wants to forget. 

“Michael,” it’s on his lips like a plea and the ache in his chest grows deeper. The man still hasn’t answered him. 

Only twenty more days.

 

**November 13th, 2005  
Ottawa, ON**

Dany wakes up alone, shaking and sweating in the middle of the night, though the sweat might be tears, he can’t ever be sure. 

He grabs for his phone, like he always seems to do, his lifeline to the rest of the world, and dials a number by heart. Sometimes he waits for an answer, but sometimes he hangs up before the other phone can even ring. No missed calls, no evidence.

Tonight, he waits and waits and waits and only has time to wonder what time it might be, since he never looks at the clock on nights like these, before the ringing ends and heavy, sedated breathing ignites a strange fight or flight surge of adrenaline. 

Swerve, brake, brace for impact. 

“‘Allo?” The voice is exhausted, tinged with annoyance and Dany wants to feel guilty that he woke him up. 

“D’you ever still think of him?” He bites his lip and waits for the answer. Nothing else needs to be said.

“All the time, Dany,” Ilya rasps over the line. There’s a guilt in the other man’s voice, but it’s nothing like what he can hear in his own. Even still, it’s comforting sometimes to hear; he’s not the only one that really, _truly_ remembers.

 

**December 26, 2005  
Ottawa, ON**

All Michael had told Dany he wanted for Christmas was one of his jerseys. “The real kind,” he’d put his hands on his hips and pursed his lips in mock-attitude. Dany had laughed and promised him one. 

He’d opened it first thing Christmas morning and refused to take it off the whole day. Except once. 

“I like seeing your name on me,” his voice was gravely and his eyes half-lidded. They’d taken it off for _that_ , but Michael had thrown it right back on again afterwards. 

Dany had also given him a lower bowl ticket to the game against the Rangers. Michael didn’t go to games often, maybe twice a year. He said they made him nervous, and after a few instances of seeing Dany hit in the shield or shin, even dragging him out to one game was a battle of constant reassurances. 

However, tonight Michael had gone with little fight and Dany watches him from the corner of his eye all through warm-ups and the anthems, smiling to himself whenever he catches Michael looking back. The prideful grin on the man’s face is enough to make Dany blush every time. 

There are a lot of Heatley jerseys in Scotiabank Place, but none of them stand out more to Dany than Michael’s when he searches the standing crowd after scoring the first goal of the game, a little over two minutes in on the power play. 

He points to him and winks, playing it off to Chara when he asks about it as mere flirtation for the fans. 

Dany likes seeing his name on Michael, too.

 

**October 5th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dany curls up on his side on the hospital bed. He’s not small enough to fit yet, though he tries his best. His mother sits beside him; her head leaning on his bed. He can tell she’s asleep without even looking at her. 

He hasn’t slept since Lu Anne and his mother came to tell him about Dan, too afraid to close his eyes. The delirium hasn’t quite taken over yet, though he doesn’t know how long it’s really been since Lu Anne left, and maybe he’s asleep right now. 

The door to his room cracks open, a sliver of the hallway light seeping into the uneasy glow in his hospital room. Dany hates nights in the hospital, when the lights turn down and visitors are only outlines until they’re all the way inside. Any one of these shadows could be coming to tell him worse news. The unknown is scarier to Dany than anything else. 

The door shuts but the figure stays, hand hovering on the knob. 

Dany doesn’t try to speak first, and his mother doesn’t wake up to speak for him. His vision readjusts to the dimness and he locks eyes with Ilya, looking scared and perched to run.

They both breathe heavily, in sync. The Russian’s mouth is squeezed into a tight line and his eyes are puffy and red. His throat moves like he wants to speak but he keeps quiet. Dany is fairly certain moments like these call for English outside Ilya’s comprehension anyway. 

The rhythmic breathing slows his heart rate and makes his eyes droop. He doesn’t exactly feel safe, but he’s not quite scared.

Ilya tips his head in a silent nod and pauses a beat before slipping back out of the room as quietly as he’d come. Dany closes his eyes, his hand still entwined with his mother’s, and he sleeps until morning.

 

**January 2nd, 2006  
Atlanta, GA**

Dany isn’t sure what he’s expecting his first game back in Atlanta as a Senator. Nothing feels safe here, nothing is as familiar as it should be. He’s already anxious to get back to Ottawa the moment the plane touches down. 

He knew that there would be a busy media scrum and tons of questions, all the unwanted reminders and triggers he’d wanted to leave behind in the first place. There’s still just no preparation for what it sounds like in his head the moment he sees Phillips looming in the distance. 

By puck drop, just being in the building is churning his stomach. His eyes keep shooting to the home team tunnel; he knows exactly what’s down there. Dany wonders if the stall is still exactly the same. If he were a bigger man, he thinks, he would have thought to ask, or to go look for himself, at the very least to pay respects. But he’s not a bigger man; he’s just Dany, he’s a coward.

Every time he so much as touches the puck the building seems to shake with booing. He wasn’t sure what he was expecting being back here, but it certainly wasn’t this. He tries to play like he can’t hear it, the whole team does, but they’re down three goals by the end of the first and Dany can’t help but feel like he deserves this. He deserves every fucking bit of this anger and hatred and when it’s all over, it still won’t be enough.

The worst part, he knows, that he can’t tell _why_ they’re doing this. If it’s the trade or. Maybe it’s because of Dan. His stomach drops to his knees and stays there. They’d never really forgiven him at all, had they? He spends the first intermission in the bathroom throwing up. No one comes to check on him. 

He scores in the third, though he’s not really even trying anymore, having checked out mentally somewhere around the two-minute mark of the opening period. When the boos rain down on him as his name is announced, it takes all that he has not to stand up and scream at the fans that they can do better. Their worst is still not enough. 

The Senators lose 8-3 and Dany spends the rest of the night lying in bed in his hotel room, thinking about those outraged voices, screaming. 

There is a beauty to their rage, he reasons. They’re trying to voice a betrayal he can’t even begin to understand. At the same time, it’s not likely anyone in that arena understands him either. The sounds of the voices lull him into a semi-sleep as he promises not to allow himself to forget what that felt like. To be _hated_.

 

**July 9th, 2006  
Kelowna, BC**

Michael’s townhouse is starting to look like Dany actually lives there year round and not just like he’s here about a month and a half in the summer. He’s got some gear piled in the living room that he uses for shinny games at the local rink, more clothes than he’s got at his parent’s house in Calgary, and Michael. It’s perfect.

“I should move out here, too,” Dany says on a whim as the two of them walk around the edges of Okanagan Lake, barefoot in the gravely shoreline. 

“Yeah?” He can tell Michael doesn’t quite believe him. 

“Shouldn’t I? I mean, you’re here; I got a lot of my shit here. It kinda makes sense in the long run, too. Invest in some property or something.” His father is into him doing that sort of thing but he can tell by Michael’s laugh that the man isn’t buying the idea as Dany’s own. 

“If you really wanted to, I guess you could. I just figure the place would sit empty for most of the year anyhow. Not really a point in that.”

“You could live there if you wanted, keep it up while I’m gone.” 

“M’not really sure I like that plan. It’s kinda far from work and school.” It’s not, Dany knows it’s actually particularly close to both, more so even than Michael’s townhouse. “And a waste of money, really, if it’s just going to get used for a little while.” 

“I can afford it you know.” Dany tries not to sound hurt, even if he is, but he still knows that’s the wrong argument to make the second Michael stops short in his tracks. 

“Fuck off, Dany, I know you can. I just don’t see the point. Living with you when you aren’t even there ten months of the year.” There’s an edge to his voice that makes Dany cringe. 

“Fine. Forget I mentioned it then. Maybe I’ll just get it for me.” 

“Go ahead.” 

They walk in silence back to the car, both too stubborn to apologize first.

 

**September 29th, 2006  
Ottawa, ON**

He lets all of his calls go to voicemail for a few hours before he finally just shuts his phone off. Let everyone be mad at him later for worrying them; right now he doesn’t need their sympathy. 

He feels stupid for ever allowing himself to think that coming here would end up being different than going to Switzerland or Russia. It’s all the fucking same in the end. 

Nothing has changed for him. Not now. Not ever. He feels an incapacitating guilt for even trying.

 

**April 21st, 2007  
Ottawa, ON**

This is the farthest he’s ever been in his career. Everything he’s ever played for is just four wins away and he can taste the victory before their opponent is even decided. He can taste the failure, too, but that bitterness churning in his gut is familiar enough that he is able to look past it. He _wants_ this. He’s dreamed about this since the day he first held a hockey stick. 

Dany convinces himself that even at his lowest, the chance to be where he is now is what keeps him coming back. If not for this, then why?

But it always seems to be events like these that bring the dark voice back; at least the pattern is recognizable. Maybe if just the right amount could change, just the right combination of events. _Maybe_ , if he wins, he will be able to move past this. 

For the sake of optimism, he lies. He tells himself that he’s too busy to pay attention to the false hopes this time around, and instead of listening, he shuts it all off. 

Everything becomes about the game. Every waking moment he has he’s watching old footage or skating or shooting or in the gym. He sketches out ideas for odd-man rushes on napkins. 

He allows all his calls to go to voicemail for days and swears that he will be nothing but hockey. He will win.

 

**June 8th 2007  
Kelowna, BC**

He’s in a fucking haze, that’s the only way to describe it. Autopilot in full force as he walks around in his suit and sunglasses and tries to make himself look just another guy here to watch the graduation ceremonies and not like two days ago he lost the biggest prize in his career to the Anaheim Ducks. 

The rest of the team is in Ottawa, cleaning out their lockers and facing the brutal full-frontal assault from the press and he’s here, in Kelowna, watching Michael graduate with his Master of Education. He’d managed to get clearance to go from the team management by selling Michael as a cousin. Everyone seemed too weary to question him and Dany was grateful for that. 

Though he’d be lying if he said this is where he would rather be. He’s a million miles removed from the convocation ceremony and every word from the stage washes right over him. 

He feels guilty for not caring as the names are read, one after the other, lulling him into an anesthetized trance.

He wants to get out of here, get away from all these people. He had ended up buying the lake house on Okanagan, but, as Michael had suspected, it did sit empty for most of the year. 

Now that he was back, even if only for the graduation as he still needed to clean out his locker and attend to some final business in Ottawa, it seemed the perfect escape, a way to put the Cup Finals behind him. He is itching to get to it as the hours drag endlessly on.

He claps for Michael’s name, and his smile in that moment is genuine, but he refuses to stay for the celebrations afterwards, slipping away quietly after giving Michael a platonic hug goodbye. 

He’ll be himself again by the time he’s back for the summer for good, just not yet. He hopes Michael understands.

 

**October 2nd, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Dan is back in surgery for the second time when Dany’s parents finally arrive from the airport. His mother holds him, whispers ‘Ich liebe dich’ in his ear and ‘We’re so lucky.’ She kisses his temple. 

Dany doesn’t feel lucky. He doesn’t feel anything at all but shooting pain and cold, and it’s still not enough to make him feel human anymore.

 

**January 20th, 2008  
Ottawa, ON**

Sitting out of games just _reminds_ him, he finds out very early on in his injury. His arm is in a sling to keep his shoulder still and it’s the immobility that really kills him. He tries to keep it together for the sake of those around him, but there’s only so much he can really hide from those that know him best. 

His mother flies out to keep him company for a while, but after five days of playing nurse to more than just his physical aches and pains, affairs at home in Calgary have her flying back. Dany wants to go with her but the team doctors are strict about his care and the most time he’d be able to get would be a day. It’s not worth it in the end.

Michael takes a week off from teaching to come help him once his mother is gone and Dany can see in his face that he senses something the moment he walks in to the apartment. 

“Have you been eating? Dany, your face looks so thin!” He’s not in the mood for this, no matter what place the worry comes from. 

“Fuck, Mike, I just went through this with Mom. Not you, too.” 

“Well have you?” 

“No, not actually,” he tries to sound bored and exasperated but the concern in Michael’s voice has him near tears. He’s been emotionally frayed since he first separated his shoulder, the doctors’ visits and sedentariness bringing him back to a time in Atlanta that would never really be behind him. 

“Dany, Jesus!” The anger in Michael’s voice is visibly out of fear but it doesn’t help the situation at all. 

“What? What do you want me to say? You want me to let you just walk in the door and start busting my ass? Like I don’t have enough people all over me about this fucking constantly, the last person that I want to hear it from is you! I didn’t ask you to come, you know!” It explodes out of him in a surprising burst of rage and if he didn’t hurt so fucking badly, he’d be forcing Michael back out the door. 

“Actually, you did.”

“Well, I didn’t think you would.” Dany spits back as harshly as he can. 

He barely recognizes this side of himself and he can tell by the look on Michael’s face that the other man is struggling with the same thoughts. He only gets like this when he has too much time to think. 

They stand facing one another in the living room for a long while; Dany’s erratic breathing the only real sound in the room save the ticking of the wall clock. 

Michael inhales sharply. “Tell me why you’re upset.” There are no accusations in his words, just a quiet trepidation. 

And that’s all it takes before Dany’s anger is melting into something more like grief, the tears spilling down his cheeks before he can even register the switch. 

“What good am I? If I’m not out there with my team, what good am I?” 

“Dany! You’re plenty—,” 

“No! I promised them!”

“They can’t make you promise things like that.”

“I’m not talking about the team!” His thoughts are moving faster than his mouth. “I promised them I would keep playing for him and if I’m not out there, then,” he wipes his eyes furiously. “It’s my only fucking purpose and goddamnit, without playing I’m just…” _a coward_. He can’t bring himself to say it, but his silence voices more than he could ever find the words.

Michael knows exactly who ‘they’ are and who ‘he’ is and it shows in the softening features of his face. 

“That’s not a healthy way to look at this, you know that.”

“No, I don’t! What’s wrong with that exactly?”

“Because, you can’t play forever. What if, God forbid, you get hurt worse than this one day? Or what about when you retire?” 

The thought isn’t unfamiliar territory to Dany, and he has spent more than a few nights staring at the ceiling thinking about that inevitable day. He believes he’s got it pretty well figured out, to be honest, what he’ll do when he’s done being useful, when he can’t keep his promise anymore. 

Though, for now, he sighs instead of responding as the best answer he has is one no one is ready to hear. That is a problem for another day. 

**March 8th, 2008  
Phoenix, AZ**

Dany sits at the bar in Phoenix and sips at his drink. His hair hasn’t even dried from the post game shower yet and the water itches under the collar of his suit. It’s a good night to go out, the win still vibrating through his veins. After so long of being out of the lineup, he’s still not taking a moment for a granted. And tonight, the win was much needed after the loss two nights back in Los Angeles, the agonizing shut-out to cap off a three game losing streak down the California coast. 

But, none of that tonight, Dany reassures himself, a smile crooking his lips. His phone buzzes in his pocket, and when he sees Michael’s name on the screen all thoughts of wins and loses are forgotten.

_Good game tonight. Nice goal, too. ;) You out celebrating?_

Dany chuckles as he reads the message. _definitely looking to keep the party going_ he clicks out quickly and sets the phone next to his drink on the bar, finishing off the last of it and gesturing for another. The Saturday night crowd is still holding strong despite the late hour. 

He surveys the men milling around, most of them in tight jeans and sheer cotton shirts, the Phoenix heat stifling even in early March. A select few mingle in suits, like him. His phone buzzes again. 

_Have a great time, babe. Love you! Call me in the morning._

Dany can’t sing the praises of his boyfriend enough, he thinks as he slides the phone back into his pocket. Though now it’s time to choose his prey for the evening, Dany feels himself hardening already. 

He turns in his seat to appraise the crowd once more and after another sweep of the room, he catches eyes with a man in the other corner, nursing a beer. He’d know that stance from a mile away.

“Shit,” he nearly chokes on his drink as the recognition flashes in the other man’s eyes as well. His buzz is dead instantly as Jason Spezza makes his way across the room toward Dany.

The walk over feels like an eternity and Dany turns to set his drink back on the counter, praying this is all just in his head, that the man just _looks_ like Spez. He lifts out of his seat but Jason is at his side before he can leave. 

He’s at least relieved to see that Spezza doesn’t look any more thrilled about this than he does; there is no knowing gleam in his eyes, no half-cocked grin. Just wide-eyes and a nervous sweat.

“So,” Spezza rubs his hand through his hair, hips tilting to the side as his knees lock. “What are you doing here?” 

“Just checking the place out,” Dany hopes he sounds indifferent, like he hasn’t been to this bar every night he’s able when he happens to be in town. 

“Yeah, uh. Me, too.” Spez finishes off the last half of his beer in remarkable speed and Dany tries not to notice. “Nothin’ special, eh?” He wipes his mouth with the back of his jacket sleeve and sets the empty bottle down. He can’t quite tell if Spez means the bar or the men in it.

Dany plays off his nervous laughter as agreement. “Nope. I was just on my way out, actually.” 

“Yeah, uh, me too. See you at the hotel.”

“Yeah, see ya.” He jumps on the opportunity to leave, not even caring to make note of the fact that he doesn’t see Jason following him out; nor that Jason still hasn’t left when Dany’s cab finally arrives.

 

**October 1st, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

No one will tell him how Dan is doing; they barely tell him how he is doing. He can feel what is broken in his body, what hurts and where, the chafing of the metal around his ankle that bothers him sometimes when his foot falls asleep. 

But, for the most part, they keep him sedated. The world fades in and out of focus around him as he tries to find some thought to help ground himself. When he closes his eyes, it’s all bricks and pine needles until the edges start to turn black and he is swept back under water, no more answers there than in waking.

 

**October 13th, 2008  
Ottawa, ON**

Dany doesn’t go out as often anymore after the incident last season with Spezza. He’s surprised to find that he doesn’t miss it all that much, not really. And it was always harder to go out on a long home stand anyway. 

Since the night in Phoenix, neither he nor Spez have spoken of the incident to one another directly, though Dany was uneasy with way Jason liked to hint at ‘indiscretions’ in Dany’s presence, his eyebrows crooked in a way that made Dany’s palms sweat and his pulse race. 

Michael insisted that Dany was being unreasonable when he took anything Spez said as more than normal ribbing between teammates, but it wasn’t a secret around the locker room that their relationship had pretty much deteriorated after some unknown incident at the end of the previous regular season. Chris Phillips had tried to ask Dany about it once and he’d artfully stalled the conversation. The only good part about being swept in the first round of the playoffs was that Philly had been too preoccupied to remember to bring the falling out back up. 

Preoccupied then, however, didn’t necessarily mean forgotten or abandoned, and Dany had caught more than a few long stares from Chris and Jason alike. Times like this he hated going home to an empty apartment, the messages on his answering machine a far cry from having the real Michael on hand. 

He’d been spoiled over the summer, like every summer, and being back always took getting used to. But, Dany knew, he had always been pretty good at that ‘getting used to’ thing.

 

**November 8th, 2008  
Raleigh, NC**

“I slept with a woman tonight,” Dany sounds incredulous even to his own ears, and still a little bit drunk, as he listens to the strange strangled noise Michael makes on the other end of the line. 

“Are you ill?” Mike half-chokes, half-laughs and Dany winces at the sound. 

“I had to. They were starting to notice.”

“Notice what?” Michael almost sounds hurt and it makes Dany feel even worse. 

“That I never brought anyone home from the bars.”

“Well, not _their_ bars. Or Jason’s bars,” Michael laughs again and Dany feels his blood pressure rising.

“It’s not about Spez!” He honestly regrets ever telling Michael that story. “It’s about the rest of them. They look at me, you know. With that fuckin’ stupid question on their faces like they’re just waiting to call me out on it and I’m sick of it, Mike! Fucking sick of it!”

He’s not in the mood to joke tonight. Not about this, not after what he just did. 

“M’sorry. But what does fuckin’ some chick have to do with any of this?” 

“To get them off my back about it!”

“They’ve never said anything to you about it, I don’t know why you think suddenly they will now!” 

“Because they don’t have to! They don’t have to say anything, not with the way they act around me. ‘Specially not Spez.” 

“Well fuck him! Just because he’s s a goddamned closet case doesn’t mean—”

Dany is nearly blind with rage at that. “Well so am fucking I, Christ!” Dany kicks the wastebasket clean across the room and hears the metal thunk as it collides with the dresser.

“Calm down, Dany, you know I didn’t mean it like that.” 

He’s too mad to hear Michael’s pleas; mad at Jason, mad at himself. Mad at that stupid woman who’d agreed to come back here with him in the first place. He can hear Michael talking but he sounds too far away for Dany to hear the actual words. 

The knock on his hotel door is enough to snap him out of his fit. 

He hangs up the phone quickly without a word and sees Phillips through the peephole, scuffing his feel on the carpet. 

They both look sheepish as Dany unlocks the door. 

“Um. Fish said he heard ya screamin’ through the wall. Figured that uh, that you were done with yer guest.” 

The words cut Dany to the core but he tries his best to play cool. 

“Yeah, she cut out a while ago.” Even saying ‘she’ is embarrassing to Dany and he looks away, worries that Philly can see right through him. He steps aside to let his roommate back in, ignoring Michael calling him back. Chris seems to notice the sound of the vibrating from Dany’s pocket. 

“I can come back if ya wanna take that. I was jus’ hanging out with Vermy watching a movie, s’not a big deal.” 

“No, no. It’s fine, you’re fine, I was just. Yeah.” 

Dany feels itchy as his phone buzzes with the missed call before he can feel the pulses signaling that Michael is calling him again. He pulls it out to switch it off, tossing it on his unmade bed. Just the sight of the rumpled sheets has his skin crawling. 

“M’gonna jump in the shower real quick but, um.” Dany stops himself before he can ramble on anymore and practically trips on himself into the bathroom. 

He scrubs his skin nearly raw in the shower and prays the water is loud enough to drown out his quiet crying.

 

**January 27th, 2009  
Ottawa, ON**

Locker room talk is usually bawdy and crude but he’s managed to attune his brain to shut most of that out. Sometimes things catch his ears though, when it’s not something he hears often, or when it’s his own name. 

He catches a whisper of ‘Dany’ on a teammate’s lips and looks up, though they all seem completely engaged in conversation and no one is looking at him to implicate themselves. 

He goes back to work pulling up his socks and securing them in place. 

“Faggot.”

It’s quiet, under someone’s breath, and maybe even not directed at him or related to the fact that he just heard his name. But that doesn’t stop the bubbling unease in his gut or the nervous noise he makes as his sweaty fingers try to grip his breezers but slip free. 

He allows a long beat to pass before he looks up and around the room again. Spezza catches his eyes, grins unsympathetically and laughs his cackling laugh. 

Everything around him rapidly begins to feel too tight. His gear, his skin, Ottawa. His whole life seems suddenly like a cage too small to contain him.

 

**February 14th, 2009  
St. Paul, MN**

Philly has always known Michael as Dany’s friend from college. It’s the story they’d settled on a while ago and one that they were content to stick with while it was believable. And, if they noticed that Michael had timed his monthly road visit with Valentine’s Day, well, none of them was brave enough to mention it this time around. 

It was hard to visit on the road, team events more than obligatory when they were traveling together, but Chris was good about being gone when he needed to be and Dany was able to overlook his paranoia when it came to bringing Michael around after so long of not seeing him. 

“This one is new,” Michael grazes his finger over a blue swipe across Dany’s ribcage. 

“Boards,” Dany smirks, letting Michael examine every inch of his bare skin, his own ritual after time apart. Michael lowers his lips to the bruise and sucks gently, causing Dany to roll his eyes back, biting his lip to stay quiet. 

He’s sprawled naked on his hotel bed while Michael worries over him in tented boxers, and they’re alone on the floor, at least as far as teammates are concerned, but Dany is always cautious. 

The knocking on his door seems to confirm his own prudence and Michael pulls off of him with an annoyed look. 

“I’ll tell ‘im to fuck off,” Dany sighs heavily, assuming another teammate has come to try and usher him out for a night on the town. 

“You better. S’our anniversary,” Michael tries to look irritated but the blush on his cheeks makes him look more aroused than anything. 

“Heater? You in there?” He recognizes the coach’s voice immediately. 

“Shit.” Dany jerks upright faster than he means to, nearly knocking Michael on the floor. They share a panicked look before Michael grabs for his t-shirt and jeans, ducking into the bathroom and locking the door. 

“Coming,” Dany’s voice sounds strangled but the knocking stops. He grabs a robe from the closet and ties it tight around his waist. He hopes his lips don’t look too raw from kissing as he opens the door slowly. 

“Hey. You busy?” 

“Um, no. Not really,” he lies easily. “Something wrong?” 

“Just hoping I’d be able to talk with you for a few,” Clouston brushes past Dany and sits on the mussed comforter. “We haven’t had much time to talk since I’ve been here and I thought seeing as you were still around tonight, we could catch up a little.” 

Dany hopes the sag in his shoulders isn’t painfully obvious as he takes a seat beside his coach. 

It’s an hour later before he’s finally able to coax Clouston out of the room, their conversation covering everything from the power play units, to Alberta, to current movie releases. Dany opens the door to the bathroom to find Michael sitting on the floor, dozing off with his head tipped against the lip of the tub. 

“Hey, babe.” He gently shakes the man awake, amused smirk on his face as Michael immediately reaches for him. “Sorry about that.” 

“S’okay,” his voice is slurred with sleep still as he tries to rouse himself enough to stand on his own. “Everything all right with you?” 

“Yeah. Just talkin’ business,” Dany leaves his answer vague. He doesn’t need to ruin this night by adding stress to the evening. 

“Y’sure?” 

“Mmhmm.” Dany puts on his best seductive grin and hauls Michael to his feet, letting his bathrobe fall open. “Now, where were we?”

 

**April 13th, 2009  
Ottawa, ON**

Dany sits in the locker room beside his teammates, cleaning out his locker and facing the onslaught of press. They all seem to blame him, the staff, the guys, the interviewers. 

He bites his tongue and gives his best canned answer to their probing questions about the utter meltdown of a season the Senators had just produced, somehow with Dany leading the fucking way to failure. 

Four hours later, the last of the cameras and recorders are ushered out the door and he’s staring down the angry faces of his teammates. It’s not even a tiny bit easier.

 

**June 9th, 2009  
Kelowna, BC**

“I called them.” Dany walks in the door of the lake house and throws his bag of gear down in the foyer. He’s still dripping sweat from the game of shinny and the air-conditioning in the house feels amazing. Michael looks up from a book in his lap, his reading glasses sitting on the edge of his nose, his bare feet perched on the arm of the sofa. 

“Who’s ‘them’?” He scrunches up his face and pokes out his tongue to wet his lips. 

“The Senators. I called them. I told them I wanted a trade.” 

Michael sits bolt upright, shutting the book loud enough to make a noise. “You _what_?! Dany, why?!” The reaction has Dany second guessing himself immediately. “I thought we talked about this! A thousand times! You’re just being paranoid about Spezza and!” Michael cuts himself off abruptly.

“Well, what’s done is done now. I already talked to the management and my agent and told them I’m not happy there. I want to be dealt out of Ottawa.” 

He had expected Michael to be happier for him, taking something into his own hands for once. 

“When did you call?” 

“After the game,” he runs a hand though his sweaty hair and eyes the direction of the shower. 

“And you didn’t think you ought to come home and maybe mention this shit to me first! Dany, I don’t get you! You get so fucking pissed off when things don’t go your way and yet you pull the wool over everyone’s eyes all the time! I swear half the fucking time I don’t know what you’re thinking until three months later and there’s some fallout for it.” 

It hits Dany like a punch to the gut. “You always know what I’m thinking, Mike.” He doesn’t mean to sound so bewildered, but that’s one thing about Michael that Dany has never questioned. 

“Not lately! You’ve gotten so goddamned obsessed with thinking they’re out to get you ‘cause you’re gay or some other invented reason, it’s turned you into a completely suspicious person!” 

“It’s true though! I know Spez told them! Clouston has had it in for me since the day he caught you leaving my hotel room, cutting my minutes nearly in half since then, and rest of the guys, they fucking laugh when they see you visiting me, you know that!”

“They don’t, Dany. They don’t do that; it’s all in your head!” 

“How could you possibly even know that?! Of course they don’t do it in front of you.” Even if Dany is wrong, Michael wouldn’t have any way of proving what he says is true either; he’s never been there to see it. 

“They’re all going to accuse you of just jumping ship now, you realize that right? You’re pissed that you’re their scapegoat, or that you feel like you are, and you’ve just gone and made this a fucking thousand times worse for yourself! You better pray the team doesn’t find out.” 

“I thought you’d be on my side!” 

“Dany, I’m _always_ on your side, but sometimes I don’t think you want me there! If you did, you would have discussed this with me first!” 

He doesn’t have a good answer for that and the last bit of his bravado starts to crumble. 

“Do you really think I’m lying about them?”

“I don’t think that _you_ think you’re lying, but honestly, I don’t know.”

“I’m miserable there. I have been since, God, since I can remember.” 

“I know.”

“Then why aren’t you at least a little bit happy for me that I’m trying to get myself out of it.”

“Because you did it without me. Not even just that, you never even _told_ me that you were considering it as an option.”

“But it has nothing to do with you!” 

The words are out of him in a rush and the hurt look on Michael’s face is instantaneous. He takes off his glasses and sets them on the coffee table beside his book, toes curling into the carpet. 

“D’you really think that’s true? That where you live and work has absolutely nothing to do with me?” He’s eerily calm but the watery gleam in his eyes has Dany backpedaling quickly. 

“Mike, fuck. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like—”

“But it’s what you said! It’s how you’re always acting. I swear you don’t even think of me as being a part of your life. Five years we’ve been together and I don’t even get the consideration you’d give a goddamned housecat when it comes to things like this.

“I know why you left Atlanta, I supported you on that. I was so fucking happy that you got what you wanted, and Christ, I would have supported you on this, too because I know you’re miserable and that they treat you like shit.”

Michael’s voice breaks on his last word and he hides his face in his hands. 

Dany has no idea how this went from zero to sixty, except that he does, because it was his fault. 

“How long have you been thinking about this?” Michael squeaks. 

Dany wants to lie, he honestly doesn’t know how the truth could fix this because he knows what Michael wants him to say. He wants him to say that it was on a whim; he’d woken up that morning and just decided to get out. 

“Since March.”

“Do you even love me anymore?” The subject changes unexpectedly and Dany isn’t even sure he heard right. 

He’s across the room in three strides, ignoring the fact that he’s sweating all over the sofa. 

“I love you, Michael. I fucking love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. More than fucking hockey, you know that.”

“I don’t know that.”

“If I didn’t love you, I wouldn’t even be trying to leave Ottawa. I hate how they act when they see you, even Philly has been a little bitch about giving up the room and I just. I never should have been so goddamned careless in the first place.”

“You’d rather me just stay away completely then?” 

“No! Fuck, Mike, no. I’m leaving _because_ I want you around. I’m just trying to protect you from them.” 

“Protecting me from them? Fuck off, Dany, you’re _hiding_ me from them. And I know why you do it, I’m not saying I don’t understand, but just cut the self-righteous bullshit, all right? It is what it is. You’re scared.”

“Of course I am, Mike! This isn’t easy, you know! There’s a fucking reason that not a single NHLer has come out. The fact that you even come around at all is a huge thing.”

“They think I’m your cousin or your college buddy, whatever you tell them!”

“They used to. They don’t believe that any more.” 

“So what, so you go to a brand new city and you start over again more carefully? Hide me better?” 

And like that, Dany thinks he finally gets it. Michael blinks back tears, his icy blue eyes even brighter as he struggles not to cry. 

“I don’t want to leave Ottawa because they know about you, Michael. I want to leave Ottawa because of how they _treat_ us now that they know about you. I’m getting too old to lie.” 

“You’re not old,” Michael protests, tiredly. 

“In hockey years, I’m getting there.” They both laughs despite themsevles. “Just, I don’t want to do this shuffle forever, spending our anniversary hiding you in bathrooms because the coach wants to bitch at me, that’s stupid. I just want to start over; but I’m not trying to do it without you.” 

Michael leans into him, resting his head on his shoulder and the tension of the argument starts to drain. He drapes his arm around the man and pulls him closer. 

“I should have told you, you’re right. M’sorry that I didn’t. I was afraid you’d try to talk me out of it.”

“I want you to be happy.” 

“We will be.” Dany knows it’s true.

 

**September 30th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

Every time he wakes up, Dany has to re-remember. The grogginess pulls him back into something that he’s starting to think of as his own survival mode, though he hardly feels better for it.

The second thing he does when he wakes up is search the room for his mother. He curses the policewoman in the corner whose presence has tricked him more than a few times. They make eye contact and Dany looks away. 

She had woken him up early, or maybe late, the night before. Dany doesn’t know what day it is anymore, if time is even moving. 

She had woken him up to show him pictures of his car, what was left of it; another officer was lingering behind her but he had stepped up and shackled Dany’s ankle to the hospital bed. The woman had all but spat at him when she demanded his version of the events and Dany’s ears were ringing as he tried to piece anything together. She seemed annoyed when he couldn’t be more than just vague.

Then, she’d photographed him, a booking photo; though his hospital gown was hanging halfway off, too small for his body, and his face, he was sure, was still bloody. 

She was not his mother, but every time he woke, Dany hoped maybe she would be there in the officer’s place. 

Another presence in the room has his vision spinning to focus on the sad looking man that he recognizes as important, but even that instant familiarity in the sea of police and doctors and nurses is enough to be comforting and he’s crying before he can help himself. 

“Dany?” 

One of the owners, Dany places him as he gets closer, but the man’s eyes are enough to show that he’s not here on business. 

“How’s Dan?” He doesn’t mean to sound so small, but it’s hard to talk through the tears and every little sob makes tendrils of fire shoot through his jaw, despite the pain medication dripping steadily into his body. 

“He’s pretty banged up. I don’t really know his condition though. Son, are your parents here?”

“I-no. I don’t think. Maybe on the plane still.” Dany is still fairly certain they’re coming. He won’t let himself think otherwise yet, but it’s been so long since he’s seen them. When the man reaches to shake his hand, they collapse together in a weak half-hug that has Dany’s face crushed up against the man’s chest and it hurts worse even that the tears, but he wants this closeness enough to ignore that. 

“I don’t remember what happened,” he offers it up weakly, though the question he’s answering was never asked. “I just know Dan is hurt.” 

That’s all anyone will tell him, but he’d seen the blood on the pavement in the photos. He’d seen the car. 

The man stays with him for a few hours and they talk hockey, half-heartedly. Dany knows he’s not conscious for much of the visit; every time his eyes close it feels like days before he opens them again, every blink taking a wedge of time off the clock. 

When he blinks again, it is morning. He’s alone.

 

**July 3rd, 2009  
Kelowna, BC**

For the last two weeks, when he dreams about the accident, all foggy scenes and earthy smells, it’s been Michael in the car beside him, bracing on the dash. 

The face is different, but the uncertainty is all the same. Sometimes Dany wishes he could stand on the rooftops and scream his remorse until his throat bleeds. No one will ever be able to see so much of him to know how he chooses to suffer. 

The harshest punishment he imposes on himself is that he never allows himself to imagine it ended differently.

 

**August 1st, 2009  
Kelowna, BC**

“Are we too old for this?” Michael startles Dany when he walks into the bathroom where Dany is brushing his teeth. 

“Jesus, Mike! Warn a guy,” he speaks around the mouthful of toothpaste before spitting impatiently. 

“But, I mean, are we?” 

“Too old for what?” His spit still feels thick and Dany rinses his mouth again before turning to cock his hip, hoping his body language conveys his displeasure with the fact his heart is still racing from the scare.

“Well, maybe not too _old_ , but just, too… I don’t know. Too something.”

“For. _What_?” He speaks slowly but with great annoyance. 

“This long distance thing.” Michael’s voice softens. “I mean, you’re about to start your new season, maybe in Ottawa, maybe god-knows-where, and Dany. Aren’t you tired of it?”

“Of hockey?” He suddenly feels like this conversation is too serious to be having in his pajamas and Dany tugs on the hem of the ratty grey t-shirt, fingers one of the holes where the threads have pulled loose. 

“No! Of this,” he gesticulates back and forth between the two of them. “These amazing summers of just us and. How it feels when it’s over. I fucking hate when it’s over.”

Dany hates it, too. He does. Especially now, this year. Not knowing how far he’s going to be, if he’ll be anywhere new at all. If he’ll have to go back to that locker room with those guys that he wants to like, that he pretends to get along with, who all just pretend to get along with him. Though, with the trade request ending up the talk of the town, he’s not sure they’ll even be in the mood for pretending much longer. 

He’d turned down Edmonton, but at least had thought enough to talk it through with Michael first this time. He explained carefully that he wanted to end up on a winning team and it had nothing to do with not wanting to move even closer to Kelowna. But now, with the way he was being crucified, even the Oilers were starting to seem like a good idea. 

“I told you my not wanting to go to Edmonton had nothing to do with you,” Dany begins delicately. 

“I’m not talking about Edmonton. I’m not even talking about Kelowna,” he waves his arms around. 

“What do you mean then?”

“I don’t know. Maybe just, something more permanent than July and August.” 

Dany doesn’t answer as his mind tries to wrap around what Michael is hinting at. He would love to be able to see Michael year-round, but it was risky. Ottawa had proven that far and away, and Michael’s teaching job was here. Though, it wasn’t like Dany hadn’t considered the idea before.

“You want to live with me?” He hopes his guess is on target. 

“I don’t know.” 

“You keep saying that you don’t know, but it sounds like you have an idea about something.” He’s getting impatient. 

“Yeah, maybe. It was just a thought I had, okay? Forget I brought it up.” 

Dany doesn’t want to forget, though. The thought of being able to spend more time with Michael and less time alone had been tantalizing him for the last year and half and he knew it had nothing to do with needing a companion. The number of times he’d been out on roadtrips this past season had dwindled down to nearly single digits, and while they never really talked about concrete numbers, Dany was fairly certain that Michael hadn’t been out with anyone else for a while, either. Even during the season. 

Moving in together had seemed like a feasible idea once Dany realized that fact. 

“You know, I offered it once. If I recall, you turned me down.”

“You offered me your vacant house,” Michael picks at a hangnail. 

“It would have been _our_ house.” It’s barely a whisper. “If you’d said yes.” 

“I should have.” 

Dany leans in the doorframe and looks down at their bare feet. Another end to another summer. Their knees nearly touch as Michael moves a step closer, both of them all bronzed skin. 

“I love you, you know,” he wraps his fingers around Michael’s wrist and pulls him into a hug. 

“I know. You, too.” 

“You love you, too?” Michael snorts at Dany’s joke but buries his nose in the soft cotton of his shirt anyhow, nuzzling into the valley between his muscles.

“No, you ass. I love _you_.” 

“We’ll figure out a way to make it work. No matter what ends up happening.” That’s something Dany isn’t willing to compromise.

 

**September 12, 2009  
Kelowna, BC**

Dany’s bags are packed already for the trip back to training camp in Ottawa. He’s been nauseated for days thinking about having to back there, how much worse it will be after the shit storm of media over the summer. 

He has felt like a man walking to the gallows for most of the last week and a half and every time his phone rings he has to catch himself from being too hopeful. 

Though, finally, he gets the call he’s been waiting for. 

Dany is sure he’s scared the living hell out of Michael the way he comes tearing into the bedroom calling his name. Michael drops the neatly-folded pile of laundry and it topples across the bed. He crosses his arms over his chest. 

“What the hell, Dany?” 

“I got it!” He grabs for Michael’s shoulders and shakes him. The weight of the world feels like it’s been removed from his back and Dany can finally catch his breath. 

“The trade?” The quirk of a smile on Michael’s lips is the most beautiful thing he’s seen in ages and Dany can’t help but kiss him. “I’m guessing yes,” Michael gasps when Dany pulls back. 

“To San Jose. California!” 

“West coast?!” Michael seems just as excited by this news and Dany kisses him again. “That’s such a short plane ride! No time change! And fuck, you look damned good in shorts.” 

Dany’s laugh reverberates through his entire body. 

“I’m so happy for you, love.” Michael has to stand on his tiptoes to reach around Dany’s neck, and once he’s there, he’s literally hanging from him. “I’ll still miss the hell out of you, but it’s so much closer. And so close to San Francisco, too! No doubt you’ll be busy!” 

Michael pulls back enough to wink as he laughs, settling back down to his own two feet, his arms still draped loosely around Dany’s waist.

“Probably not.” Dany bites his lip, something serious stirring in his gut. 

“Oh, come on, you aren’t that old, Heater! You _have_ to at least visit the Castro.” 

“I want you to come with me.” Dany blurts it out.

“Well, obviously, when I’m in town.” Michael rolls his eyes as though Dany is being the most oblivious person in the world. 

“No. Michael. I want you to come _with_ me. To San Jose. I want you to move with me.” 

Michael stammers a bit like he’s trying to wrap his head around Dany’s suggestion. “T-to my own place?”

“No. One place. Ours. Just like the summer house. Except all the time.” 

“I-I don’t know if I can get another job down there before—I mean the school year just started and—.”

“So? Michael, fuck it! We’ve wanted to do this, we both hate the distance. And I love you. If you can’t find a teaching job right away, who cares? You have time to look, we can afford for you to take the time.” 

Michael regards him with such a curious look of spontaneity, one that Dany hasn’t seen on his face more than twice since the night they met in Vancouver. 

“All right.”

“All right?”

“Yes, Dany. I’ll go with you.” He says it with a look of complete disbelief, but his grin doesn’t lie. With a resolute tug, the two of them collapse back into the mussed pile of forgotten laundry, all limbs and smiles and love.

 

**September 29th, 2003  
Atlanta, GA**

They pull up to the red light at the Lenox, Paces Ferry intersection and Dany revs the engine, laughing. 

“I’m full as fuck,” he leans back in the driver’s seat, rubbing his stomach. Dan groans in agreement. 

“Good fuckin’ burgers though.” Dan tilts his head to the side until his neck pops and sighs in relief. “‘M achy as shit and the season hasn’t even started yet. S’gonna be a long-ass year.”

“Oh, quit bitchin’, old man,” Dany scoffs and chuckles, but his own body has been feeling that same throbbing soreness that reminds him of hockey. He couldn’t be happier with it. 

Dany hates how long this light is and starts drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Dan turns up the volume on the radio and starts belting out along with the music. 

“Thoughts arrive like butterflies! Oh he don't know, so he chases them away!” Dany slaps at Dan from the driver’s seat but he keeps singing. “Someday yet! He'll begin his life again!” 

“You’re a fuckin’ shit singer, too,” Dany swipes at him again but Dan only laughs in response. 

“You just don’t know talent when it’s sittin’ right next to ya!” Dan punches him in the arm and the car lurches forward into the intersection. Dany grabs the wheel tight and shoots Dan a look. 

“Hey, watch it, you dick!” But try as he might, Dany can’t keep the amusement from his voice. 

“Maybe keep yer foot on the brake then, eh?” 

“No time fer brakes if were gonna beat Kovy home.” 

The light changes and the two catch each other’s eyes. Dany winks and guns the engine, flying down the road toward his house. Their house.

“Kneelin'! Duh duh dum-dum dah dum doesn't know to read!” Dan starts singing again. 

“Ya don’t even know the fuckin’ words, Dan! Christ!” He tips his head back and laughs, fingers curling around the steering wheel, gliding along the turns. 

“Something! Something-something halls of shame!” 

“Yer the one that’s fucking shameful, I tell ya.” Dany brushes a curl out of his eyes before returning the rude gesture Dan throws his way. 

“S’only shameful that we’re not home yet, Heater! You know Kovy’s probably already passed out in bed.”

“Probably is, fuckin’ maniac,” Dany laughs as he taps the brake around the curve.

“Even flow! Thoughts arrive like butterflies!” 

Dany pushes harder on the gas out of a slight turn into the straightaway, watching the rows of shrubs bleed into a streak of dark green. He yawns despite the din of the music; he can’t wait to get home. Dan starts banging away on the dash like a drum set, and Dany laughs at the realization that his rhythm as terrible as his voice. 

“Oh, he don't know! So he chases them away!” 

The flash of silver in the corner of his eye is enough and Dany turns. The car backing out of driveway in front of him catches both of them entirely by surprise and he only has time to register taillights before Dan is shouting his name. 

“Shit!” 

_Someday yet he'll begin his life again. Whispering hands, carry him away._

Dany swerves to left, into the oncoming lane. He can feel his stomach twisting as they move. As the back wheels skid out wider than the front, he knows he’s not in control anymore. Dany grips the wheel as hard as he can, trying to get back into the right lane. In his periphery he can see Dan bracing himself on the dash.

The car fishtails sideways until the tires finally catch the traction of the road, but as they do, the steering wheel spins out of Dany’s hands. Like a slide into the boards, position the right way, tighten your muscles, ride it out. And pray.

He slams his foot down to the floor and realizes too late that he never moved over to the brakes. 

They bounce as the car hits the curb. He doesn’t even have time to shout before everything is suddenly nothing but black.

 

**September 19th, 2009  
San Jose, CA**

He wakes up in his bed, Michael curled up beside him. The mental chiding is quick and instinctive; _their_ bed. Their first bed that isn’t temporary, ‘in the meantime’, between seasons or school years or across borders or oceans. Michael sighs in his sleep, twisting up in the sheets closer to Dany’s body. 

It’s easy to breathe in the warm bedroom air and despite the fact that he’s up before the sun, Dany feels awake. Ten more days; he brushes a hand through his short hair and scratches the back of his neck. 

The countdown is always in the back of his mind, a nervous tick that his brain can’t turn off. 

Maybe this is not his new beginning, and, for what it’s worth, Dany is rather sure that it isn’t. But this is new, this ease in his own skin, this patience with himself. He doesn’t feel better; Dany is familiar with that dangerous type of thinking. He doesn’t feel more self-assured, and certainly not whole. But he does feel different. 

And for today, for _now_ , that is something.

**Author's Note:**

> Notes here: http://sherlockelly.livejournal.com/601482.html


End file.
